Best operating system for my needs.

[Tbid]

Hi, I recently purchased a cheap Dell Poweredge sc1430 from Gumtree with the view of setting it up as a home server. Ideally what I'd like to use it as is a central location to store my Music to then be accessed by my Windows PC and MacBook. I'd also like to use it to store some files from both my Mac and PC, at some point I'd like to stream films from it to my PS3 or Apple Tv but currently I'm using powerline adapters which aren't the quickest and transfer speeds are very slow but this is something I'll sort out later.

I've got it running Ubuntu desktop at the moment just to see what I can do with it. I'm not sure if I should stick with Linux or change to a different operating system which suits my needs better. I've looked into Windows Home Server and Freenas but I'm not really sure which will be the best for my needs.

Another thing I've considered but I'm not very knowledgeable about is running Windows of some description as the base operating system and then setting up various virtual machines to provide the different services I want.

tl;dr What is the best solution for a fairly inexperienced user to set up a server to store Mac & PC files and stream media from.

 

[Tbid]

I do use iTunes as my media player yes, I was considering buying some form of NAS device or microserver but this one popped up on Gumtree and was only £45. Noise isn't really an issue as I have it set up in my garage ontop of a fridge, you say very power hungry, powers isn't really an issue either. In the fullness of time when funds allow I'd like to buy a proper microsever as it they seem much more appropriate for my needs.