Linux File Server at a School
 

Hi,
I work at a vocational school in Portugal, and we already use Linux for some things. My wish is that it would be for all things. Currently I have 1 desktop running Suse 9.3 (Mine). I installed and configured Censornet for content filtering and it is running on the wired side of the network. On the wireless side i have ZoneCD. Both work flawlessly!!! Yes... i know.... Linux ROCKS....
Now, this may seem a stupid question, but ... here it goes...
We have a laboratory with 14 machines running (cof...cof...) WINXP home.. They were "offered" by our Education Minister, and they also "offered" a machine running 2003 Server. The thing is that I want to eliminate the Server running Windows 2003 and use Linux instead ...after all i hear "Samba serves better and faster" ... isn't this beautiful!!YEAH...
What is the best Distro for this purpose? I know i can use "any" distro as a server, but what I really want is a file server/printer(maybe) and nothing else. The users should be able to log in the server and use a folder with their names in it (read, write, etc). On the other side, I would control the Server from my machine (suse 9.3) with the use of a Web browser, like I do with Censornet.
Question is: Is there out there a Distro already "pre-configured" or specially designed for this purpose, that is file/printing server?? If so which one??
Thanks,
José

If you're already running SuSE on some systems, why not stick with that? It's not my prefered choice for a network server, but it does come with some pretty good built-in tools for managing Samba shares, users, groups, etc. Plus, if you do have a Windows server running elsewhere, SuSE includes a pretty good tool for connecting in to the Active Directory. Is also fairly easy to allow Windows XP workstations to login to the a SuSE server because of these tools.

But, it's true that pretty much any distro could run what you want! In terms of what you need, something very basic like Debian, Slackware or Gentoo would be ideal as it's stable + solid. Pretty much any distro would work, but if you're already working with SuSE, why not give that a go?