Server help

[rfleming]

i want to set up a sever for my home. I already have a wireless system going ove the whole house. I have a system built for it. P4 2.8, 1gig of ram, 250 Gb Harddrive. I have a it on the internet by a cat 5 cable. How do i set up a sever on this build with linux?

[MulderMan]

what type of server will it be? for files and priner sharing, or so that you can actually log-into it. presuming you are using windows for your workstations i might be easier to use a windows based OS, and it might be easier with your wireless aswell.

[rfleming]

i will use it for file sharing and printer sharing. I was looking at linux because it was free

[Xayd]

Decide which distro you wanna use. If this machine will be just a server, sitting in a corner somewhere with no monitor or anything, a huge desktop distro like Mandrake or Red Hat isn't necessary.

Slackware and Debian are good server distros, or FreeBSD even. Debian has the best software management system of the Linux distros out there by far, but FreeBSD's is arguably better if you don't need to run Linux-only apps, hehe. Slackware is the 'lean and mean' one of the three. A basic install of it leaves nothing but what you need with the OS, allowing for a bit more customization.

For the actual file/print server, Samba is what you'll be using. Google "Samba How-To" and you'll turn up tons of info and instructions. It's pretty easy to set up .

[rfleming]

i have downloaded slackware how do i set it up to be the sever now?

[MulderMan]

burn all the distro cd's, and boot up with the first one and they usually have a nice gui (better than m$ anyway), but ive only installed mandrake and suse.