First I'd like to apologise for being away a long while. My last login was in December 2010...so I'm seriously sorry.

I bought Windows Home Server 2011 a month ago and I have had it. I can't remember the last time all of its components worked together. It has been a constant pain.

THE MACHINE
AMD Athlon 260X2 (3.2Ghz)
8GB DDR3 Transend RAM
One Hitachi 250GB Sata disk
One Hitachi 320 Sata disk
One Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB drive
GigaByte 78LMT-S2P
Atheros NIC built into the motherboard.
Thermaltake 380W 80plus bronze PSU

It is hooked to the internet via TP-link TD-W8950ND all-in-one modem.

WHAT IS IT FOR?
I use it as a DLNA server. It provides media streaming to my Samsung TV and I would also like to get it to stream to my VLC players in my home network (I'm yet to figure out how). I'd also like media streaming over the web. For instance, I'd like to watch a video clip, listen to my music or view photos at work via a webpage. I'd like to give other members of my family (some of them live abroad) streaming and downloading/uploading facilities via the webpage to/from their computers or their Android devices.

Currently, I use Serviio despite WHS 2011 having its own media streaming server.

The WHS 2011 streams music to Remote Web Access fine but I have not been able to see photos or videos.

I am a torrentist. I have been using Utorrent for quite a while and have been appreciating the RSS feed feature it has. But I don't mind working a few days to move to another client and configure the seeding of about 200 or so mostly private torrents.

I do remote desktops a lot via the Remote Web Access of WHS 2011 and I'd like the ability to do so with something similar.

The WHS 2011 purchase came with a ******.homeserver.com domain which was easy to set up and trouble free. I'd like to use that domain and if impossible, I'd like to have something similar.

LIMITATIONS
1. I have gone seriously over budget with this machine and I currently do not have the ability to spend more on it.
2. The drives mentioned above are NTFS and almost full and I do not have the ability buy new or bigger ones at the moment.
3. I have knowledge limitations...I only know a few basic linux commands. I have only used Debian, Ubuntu and Windows nothing else.
4. I have 2 PCs running windows and 1 PC on Ubuntu and two Android devices in my home network which need to access files from the server and receive media streams.

THE HELP I NEED
What I'm looking for here is general directions, possible hick ups I might face and a beforehand knowledge of what is possible and what cannot be done.

I'd prefer something with Ubuntu (not the server...I need the GUI), I'd like to know which packages I'd need and general directions (if not detailed) as to how to configure them and achieve the results.

Thanks for having the patients to read all this.

Edit: Mods...please move this thread to anywhere that suits it, if you feel this is not the right place for it.