Ubuntoo Home Server

[Michael Hipp]

Andrew Morgan wrote:
  > The ability to RDP into it from any OS, specifically XP.
> VPN in and pull down a network drive that has mutliple user folders, 
> that only specific users can access, and a shared folder for all users 
> to access from anywhere in the US to any OS, specifically XP.
> The ability to work from a regular desktop until such time that proper 
> server hardware can be purchased.

For this I'd use Hamachi as the VPN and Samba to serve file shares. It doesn't 
get much simpler than that and it will be, IMHO, the most "native" way to 
access the box from Windows - good. And the least amount of ports exposed to 
the Internet - double good.

Unless you really expect a lot of use for this then the need for "proper" 
server hardware is debatable. It won't do anything in particular that this 
desktop won't do. As always, just make sure you have a good backup scheme.

> Is this possible using the Ubuntoo Server Edition and what packages 
> would I need to do this? If not can you suggest another distro that can? 
> I am used to using Server 2003 for work, however I don't want to spend 
> that much money for an OS at home. I do have some lite experince using 
> Ubuntoo desktop so I figured that would be the best choice for me. Any 
> suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

Just install the Ubuntu Desktop edition. Install the services you want and 
press on. It will make a great server. Oversimplifying: there's nothing magic 
about it being "server", for those of us deploying small servers the only 
difference is that it has all the GUI bits and desktop apps stripped out which 
makes for a leaner install.  Oversimplifying.

Michael