Quote from: M3ta7h3adKDE oversimplifies the experience I guess.

i wouldnt say that, nor in fact would Linus Torvalds who recommends KDE to anyone who isnt scared of options.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8745257437.html
 

yeah but linus is a twat.

Quote from: White GiantMmm, great way to use that £200 graphics card    

lol Mplayer with the ascii movie plugin... ahhh that is king! lol

http://ftp.pcworld.com/pub/screencams/ascii-matrix.html

Quote from: M3ta7h3adyeah but linus is a twat.

aye, but hes The Twat rather than being A Twat.  TBH I agree with him, Gnome annoys me, KDE Lets be do tweak far more, and i am quite specific about certain things.

Hopefully Im going to try and give you some useful pointers here.

Firstly for you Id recommend ubuntu (that is with gnome, not kde). The reason for this is not necessary because gnome will be "better" but the community support for is much better.

More people install ubuntu than kubuntu or xubuntu, thus you are more likely to find help when you need it..... and anyway, its a server - most of the time its gonna sit in a corner with its monitor turned off anyway.

...and no I cant recommend OpenSuSE. We are currently migrating all our workstations at work from OpenSuSE to Ubuntu for 3 reasons.
1. The package mangement is far better
2. The documentation is much more comprehensive
3. The applications are a lot more stable.

I regularly use many linux distros including: slackware, suse, redhat, slackware, gentoo, x/k/ubunutu. Currently I run gentoo on my workstation, debian on my servers and ubuntu & slackware at work.... oh and xubuntu on my laptop

Now for each of your requirements:

File Sharing
You want to install and configure samba. See
https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/server/C/configuring-samba.html and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpSamba

Backups
Not sure what you want out of this. Just a file share to backup stuff to ? Just share your home directory on your server and backup from your windows boxes to that.

Mail Server
Ive used many mail server applications and the ones I recommend are exim for smtp and dovecot for imap.

Details can be found at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/server/C/exim4.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/server/C/dovecot-server.html

VPN
For VPN I use OpenVPN. There is a thread about installing it here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=239219

the windows GUI can be found here:
http://openvpn.se/ (get the dev version if youre using windows vista.

Bittorrent
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BitTorrent?highlight=%28bittorrent%29


Hope all that helps you out

....and for the record I use gnome + beryl on my workstation

Cornet

Cheers, thats great and very thorough! Will look at all the links when I get home. Just put the system together last night, just piled up, will move to the server box when installed and ready, so I have minimum downtime. Will prob get on to the Ubuntu install over the weekend... Will let you guys know how it goes...

Thanks again

XE

Just a quick question, will Open VPN give me acess to all computers on the network and does it support UNC names? or will I have to use IP addresses (as you do with windows VPN?)

Thanks Again!

Id rethink the OS

FreeBSD would be a better choice, imo.

If you want the ultimate in security, try OpenBSD

Both (and NetBSD) are more stable than any Linux distribution.

For a server especially - network performance is higher, the system is continuously audited, not hacked together with patches every 15 seconds like linux (Good for development etc, bad for stability) Version control is also good, imo.

I also dont know what improvements have been made to the ext file system, but UFS is much more highly regarded.

Youre not going to be unsure as to whether or not your apps will compile on whatever the flavour of the month distro is vs the one youre using at the mo either.

And dont let anyone BS you about hardware compatibility or software.

Go check out the HCL (FreeBSD has much better support for USB and wireless imo), and the ports collection is huge. So you have freebsd software that goes back for years, and years worth of linux software to boot.

If using Free/OpenBSD would that be easy to use for the novice user? And would I be able to use gnome/kde? ... Bearing in mind that I dont have a lot of a clue yet... And its more of a learning exercise than anything, the reason for using Ubuntu is that Ill probably use it on my main PC at some point when I become more accusomed to it.

Installed Ubuntu yesterday just to have a play around with it and just had my first Gnome problem when booting up this morning....

"I have detected a panel already running, and will now exit"

Causing the interface not to load, now Im thinking if I am having problems with gnome already, and not actualy having done anything other than a couple of updates! then KDE might be the way to go!

freebsd is relatively straightforward and has a good installer. Open is a bit severe for a starter. KDE and/or Gnome can be installed at initial install time or after you have your system up - same as linux really

Just trying to sort out my  "Ive detected a panel already running, and will now exit" problem...

Im currently in the gnome desktop when this error appears but its just the background and no menus, it there a shortcut key for bringing up a console? for that session...

Or does anybody have any ideas on what to do, Its a bit disheartening when its broken after doing nothing  :cry: might just install KUbuntu or freebsd even maybe.

A known issue. Take a look at the bug tracker - there may be some help there,

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309506

Quote from: XEntityJust trying to sort out my  "Ive detected a panel already running, and will now exit" problem...

Im currently in the gnome desktop when this error appears but its just the background and no menus, it there a shortcut key for bringing up a console? for that session...

Or does anybody have any ideas on what to do, Its a bit disheartening when its broken after doing nothing  :cry: might just install KUbuntu or freebsd even maybe.

Ive had this before, but not for ages on ubuntu. Anyhoo here is the fix (although you will lose a few application settings)

Reboot the computer so you get to the login screen.

Hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 and this will drop you to a console. Login using your nomal credentials.

Then type the following commands:


rm -rf .gnome*
rm -rf .gtk*
rm -rf .gconf*
rm -rf .config*


This will remove all your gnome custom settings.

Then hit Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to the graphical login and login as normal.

Hope that helps


Cornet

Sorry to revive this post just wanted to say thanks to Cornet for his response. I had left the server upgrade for a while (other commitments).. But this weekend decided to go for it and setup most of it on the new Gutsy Gibbon release. Im very impressed not 100% up and running yet, will add to it over the next few weeks, just got the basics running at the moment, and even installed it on my laptop.. forcing me to actually use and learn linux  .

Will probably be back with a few queries, already learnt a lot.

Thanks

XE