I have almost nothing but good things to say about this particular Linux distro. I have used this distro plenty of times and never stuck with it, this time I think they have it right.

FreeNAS is a Linux distro meant to be, as the name indicates, a Network Attached Storage server. It has support for many protocols which include CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, DAAP/iTunes, AFP, Rsync, and UPnP. FreeNAS also includes iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, domain authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) and a full web configuration interface. FreeNAS only required 32MB of space once installed, so this is a perfect distro to load and run from a thumb drive. FreeNAS is based on another distro name FreeBSD.

At this time I am using two hard drives which Rsync every night as a back up my media files. I am using the iTunes/DAAP to play media from LAN workstation, UPnP to stream media to my Xbox 360, CIFS/SMB (Samba) for domain authentication and to share the media drives, and SSH to remotely manage the console within the LAN.

In the latest release, 0.69 when I wrote this, they have included the Fuppes UPnP A/V Server into OS. This is by far my favorite UPnP server, and bundled with FreeNAS they have made it EXTREMELY easy to configure. If you read the review of Fuppes you may have thought it was a little too complicated. FreeNAS has solved that problem. I installed and configured this whole system well within 15 minutes. One thing to remember when setting up the UPnP service is that a “UPnP Friendly Name” contains a “:”. I chose “MediaServer :”, forgetting that could leave you searching for hours to find what is wrong. [Edit] This has been fixed in newer releases.

If you need a Network Attached Storage, don’t want to pay for a Windows license, and have an old machine laying around I recommend FreeNAS. No Linux experience needed.

You can find additional information and documentation about FreeNAS at freenas.org.