Linux file server

[G_Dem]

Hi guys,

I'm thinking of buying a cheap low spec pc and putting linux on it. I will be using it as a file server. I could prob do the same thing much more easily by buying a dedicated file server hard drive thingy but I want to practise with linux and network linux and xp systems together.

What linux will work best for this (it will need to have wireless compatabilty) and what pc specs would work well with it?

[kage]

Something like Ubuntu or Suse (Or Mandriva) would be easiest to setup, definitely.

Personally though, I would suggest slackware, as the hardware requirements would be much lower (I have used slack on a 100mhz/24mb machine to effectively stream videos).

Out of curiosity, what will you be using the fileserver for? You said linux and XP networking, so I assume you'll definitely want samba. What kind of drives will you be putting in it?

[G_Dem]

Its litirally just to play about with it. Basically I want a separate pc with 100 gig or so hard drive and prob around a 200mhz processor to store my pics, videos, mp3 etc. Keeping my main pc free and when i want to listen to something or store some more pics etc I can store it in a networked drive on the linux pc.

What is Samba?

I will be using an IDE hard drive. around 100gig. Thanks for your help kage.

[kage]

Samba is what linux uses to access Windows networks. If you want to setup a network share that Windows can use, you'll need to use samba. NFS is another networking method, 'network filesystem', but I don't believe windows can access these shares without a bit of tweaking (if then).

The hard drive shouldn't be a problem, ony thing though. On some older computers, the bios can only see hard drives up to a certain size, usuall 32 or 80gb. I have a 300gig drive an older toshiba could only use as an 80. If you run into that problem, you could try updating the bios firmware, or get a raid card and put that in, and use a smaller drive for the actual system. Linux works with most raid cards, so no worries about drivers.