Setting up a home server...maybe??

[KarmaKiller]

Hi all
I'm thinking of using one of the many towers laying around here as a storage server for music,pics, and misc files and whatnot. Now this is where any knowledge of computers i have goes out the window. I have never tried to setup a server, not really sure how to go about it. IF i do get this working, I may take another older tower I have and make it a game server. But first things first,
How would I go about this server business? I'm pretty good in linux, so i would probably want to run some kind of Linux OS. But I have 3 other computers on my network that run windows, would they still be able to access everything, would there be some kind of limitation?
Sorry for the bombardment of questions, I've read a bit about home servers and it sounds quite interesting. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[RamonGTP]

I have a small home server setup here, though it is windows and not linux based. I use it for the same types of things. Music, pictures, files, etc etc. I simply have the drives shared and mapped on my workstations. I also have my inkjet and laserjet printers setup on my server so I am able to print pictures or documents from any computer on my network.

[KarmaKiller]

That's pretty much what I want to do. Now do I need a specific server OS. I know i can do this in gentoo, but i want to be able to write and read from my other windows box's. So i'm thinking i need a windows OS. Do i need to get the MS server os, or can this be achieved in xp?

Do you just put files to share, then save them on the server box like another computer?

[RamonGTP]

I have a server OS on mine, but it isn't necessary if all you're doing is file and print sharing... That can easily be handled by XP or even win2k without a problem.

[KarmaKiller]

Cool...thanks for you help Ramon.