[Techtalk] Home server - Where to start?

[Svenja S.]

Hi everyone,

First, I'm not sure whether is this the right place to ask this, or if
it is more of a beginner question.
Anyway, we've just bought an EEEbox that we're planning to use as a home
server and for multimedia (and to play around a bit...). Not sure
whether that is such a great idea, but I didn't pay for the thing...
I've been using Arch Linux for a while, so this is what I'd like to
install on the machine. But I don't have any experience in running a
server, so do you have any suggestions how I could get an idea of what
could be done with this thing and how?
First, we would like to run a file server, plus I've always wanted my
own mail server, but that will have to wait until I really know what I'm
doing ;)
It would also be nice to have some way to remotely start X in order to
watch a movie... Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Svenja