FreeNAS alternatives? ?

gang I'm really not looking to bore into the intricasies of a nas platform - tried freenas on a very common Dell optiplex and it can't deal with the nic & router - do not want to learn linux command line interfaces to debug it for them....

what's the short path to simple file sharing, centralized-storage on otherwise "off to goodwill" pc hardware? why not xp? [can't run from a usb stick for one]. why not Mint? one of the Puppy Linux's? Ubuntu?
anyone have a suggestion?

thx

 

Why not XP? It is going bye, bye. It will be vulnerable supposedly as Microsoft ends support. You need a license. It is not a server platform.
There are a few possibilities with Linux, if you want to pay afew bucks go to server elements and get their NASlite product, used it plenty. The majority of guides on Google use FreeNAS, you might learn something there.
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/7153/1
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/fileserver


Why XP? Because you know how it works.

 

you're right about that - and I got more retired xp licenses than I could ever use up.