I've got a solid PC w/Xeon dual core, 4gb RAM, and (2) 1Tb Sata HDs - looking to replace a WinXP pc that currently is running PlayOn (for media to the BD player on the TVs) and sharing folders/drives to all the PCs (WinXP, Win7, OSX, and Ubuntu.

I have tried a few distros to get media shared to the BD players, and even a Win7 - but the BD players can't seem to play any of the video files on the newer 'servers' - and only the Win7 even appears to the Sony TV in the living room (even though it can only browse the folders with video files). Another problem with the Win7 being tested for acting as a server - is the Macs cant seem to access the shares (get Access Denied errors).

Wondering if there is any good distro that is mainly setup for sharing files and storage space to all my devices. Thinking of trying FreeNAS, and seeing if I could add the UPnP/DNLA server packages to it???

Any other suggestions?

I was trying to get Rygel Ushare and MediaTomb to work - and all three don't work.

Mediatomb won't run - tells me to check configuration and closes. When I tried to access the config file, its locked in Read-only.

Rygel doesn't give any errors, but doesn't seem to have anyplace to configure what to share - just what interface and port number.

Ushare keeps saying its not for the OS - I'm thinking it means that its 32-bit, but I use the Software Manager to install and figure it should only be installing the 64-bit version (guess thats wrong).

Basically, you can set up any distro to be a NAS. You probably will need to install Samba for this.

But this is the hard way. I would install FreeNAS. It is a distro specially made for this purpose.