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I have an old Laptop at home that i wanted to setup as a server for my Home use. Linux was my choice for stability and learning reasons. What i at least wanted out of it was;

  • Mercurical/Git repo
  • FTP server accessible to outside world
  • File sharing for within home networking
  • Media streaming for any movies or music if i have downloaded any.
  • Central data storage.

What i do not have any idea was to how to set up ftp or media sharing.

I majorly have Windows PC at home and a Macbook(MacOSX)

Got confused which distro should i use and should i simply create an FTP server or samba will be the better choice ?

Linux is the preferable choice since its free. Please advise.

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    I would use Debian since it is slow to update (meaning it's focused on stability, not bleeding edge). It would take a similar config as Ubuntu - so tutorials for either should be pretty good.
    – nerdwaller
    Commented Oct 26, 2012 at 15:41

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I have a Ubuntu 12.04 for my home server and it runs perfectly.You may try this excellent website linuxhomeserverguide for a complete guide

  1. Install Ubuntu 12.04 ( Go for server version if you don't need a GUI )
  2. Install git using this command in the terminal sudo apt-get install git use this guide
  3. Install vsftpd from terminal using this command sudo apt-get install vsftpd use this guide
  4. Rest of it is covered here

I hope it helps

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  • Awesome link .... it includes webmin as well
    – Basit Anwer
    Commented Oct 27, 2012 at 14:15
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If you want something that's easy to get up and running quickly it's hard to fault ubuntu. It also makes it very simple to install extra packages.

For simplicity of maintaining the configuration I'd recommend installing a package called webmin (Webmin Homepage) which allows you to do most tasks through a web browser. This isn't restricted to ubuntu and can be installed on most linux distributions.

This will allow you to administer both samba and ftp along with most of the other server facilities available through ubuntu.

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