I am interested in setting up a server that primary purpose will be to store files. I have a bunch of media files that I would like to setup on a Linux box and share them on a network through samba. Additionally, I would like to be able to log in remotely on occasion, and be able to do certain tasks that I wouldn't want to do on my local machine to waste resources. I mainly talking about encoding video, and things like that. So, I would like to be able to use graphical interface as well, and do this all remotely. I currently have the server installed but have seriously f'ed it up trying to get a working graphical interface that works remotely. So, here goes my question. I am going to wipe the box clean and set it up again. Would you guys recommend the server edition or the desktop edition to fit my needs ? The only problem I have with the server edition is I am having enormous amount of trouble trying to get xserver to work, I have playing with this for two days now. Anyway, this post is long enough. Please, anyone out there give me your input on this. Thank you guys.

What versions of desktop vs. server are you trying to compare, 7.04?
It also depends on your comfort level with package managers. I'd suggest server since most of the things you're requesting are already pre-installed on server, iirc. G'luck.

using ubuntu server edition 7.04 would make a nice clean server installation that would make this pretty easy, there is lots of documentation on the ubuntu forums.

if you want to log in remotely, i strongly suggest learning to use ssh and the command line. its really not as complicated as one might think and it will set you in good stead for furthering your knowledge of linux.

for encoding video from one formate to another, have you tried using transcode? its a command line program (and it does have GUI's available for it). transcode is the program that most other programs use to do the work. it looks all complicated, but its one of those programs that is a lot simpler than it looks, just use the parts your have to and it will do most of the rest automagically.

if you really want a GUI on the box, install ubuntu 7.04 desktop edition. its a pain having to set up the server edition to become the desktop edition, and everything thats in the server edition can be installed on the desktop edition (and vice versa, but its hard to turn a server into a desktop and easy to turn a desktop into a server.)

it's probably more worthwhile for you to install ubuntu 7.04 Desktop edition. that will give you the shiny GUI and all the graphical tools you need. you can also install the "openssh-server" package to enable ssh so you can use it to log in remotely. the benefit of doing it this way is that you can try your hand at doing things with ssh and the command line, and if it doesnt work, you can just wander over and do it with the GUI, you get the best of both worlds

GUI's look pretty, but linux was built on the command line, most GUI's are just pretty ways to launch the command line applications, and many of them will show you the exact command they are about to run. its often usefull to poke around in the GUI and its settings and find out what commands it is running, so you can run the same commands and cut out all the time spent setting up the GUI in the future.

wow..thanks a lot for that informative post...much appreciated. Anyway, so if i decided to go with the desktop edition so I can have a gui when needed, can I set it so the gui doesn't load automatically ? So i guess i can do as you suggest, try and do everything from the command line, and start up the gui when i really need it. Another reason I want the default setup to be the command line is to save resources, cause like i said before primarily it will just be a box hosting files. Thanks again..

always a pleasure

sure, if you look in /etc/inittab you can choose which runlevel to start in, some runlevels start the GUI, some just start a cli login. (take a peek in the file, it looks complicated, but you only need to edit the number on the initdefault line)

what resources are you trying to save? an inactive gdmgreeter (the login screen) doesnt actually use that much, aside from some ram. when its sitting there idle, linux basicly pushes it aside because its not doing anything but waiting on you, so it can divert all the processor and such to other services.

if its just a basic fileshare machine, you will need fast disks, a fast network connection and some processor time to process handling the fileshares. the ram of the machine will be used for caching files so linux doesnt have to read them off the disk every time, but other than that, unless you are serving like a bazillion users, linux doesnt actually need that much to work with.

either way, give it a shot and see what you come up with, the beauty of linux is that there is always more than one way to do things. on the bright side, you can tell exactly whats going on with your machine, so you can tinker away with it to your hearts content and if it ever breaks, lots of peeps here are happy to help

If Ubuntu still follows Debian practices, all runlevels 2-5 are the same by default. You can manually change them by enabling and disabling services to start in certain runlevels (I use a terminal gui called sysv-rc-conf in debian -- uses arrow keys and the space bar to set services).

thank you guys for your help. I am off to play with this. I think I got a good hold on what to do. If I run into any problems, I will be back, lol. Thank yous again.

It doesn't & they aren't. The *buntu's, like MEPIS, use an RH-like scheme. Most important: level 3 = CLI, level 5 = GUI.

AFA getting a remote GUI, I have been using Remote Desktop Connection & Remotedesktop Client between KDE boxen; & Remote Desktop Connection to TightVNC to access W2k.

X over ssh is possible, but I haven't used it.

I have been playing w/ Xubuntu & I like Xfce so far. You might consider Xubuntu for your server -- a good compromise between weight & graphical usefulness. I think Xfce really does deserve its characterization as a DE, not just another WM.

So ubuntu is finally installed on my box and I am succesfully sharing some old ntfs hard drives through samba. What i want to do now, is have time all mount to a single point. Could I use LVM to do this, i have two different ntfs ide hard drives and want to mount them so Linux/Windows sees them as one giant drive. If this has been asked already, Im sorry i couldn't find any tutorials or resources helping me do this.

I am probably not understanding what you want to do. -- I am having 2 contradictory reactions:

• You can't do that, they're separate file systems.
• It's trivial, just put their mount points under a common parent directory.

Besides, I think there's a typo in How would LVM help?

sorry that was a dumb post, too unclear. I want to be able to have several disks be noticed as one in linux/windows. I know you can do this with enabling dynamic disk under disk management in windows xp pro. I want to do a similar thing in linux, with two IDE ntfs drives.

I want to have one partition span across several drives similar to a software raid type thing. Hopefully that is more clear.