Mailing the story:
Creating A Home Media & File Server With Ubuntu
This HOWTO will give you the BEST home media and file server out there at a cheap (free) cost. It includes SSH2, Remote Desktop, UPNP/DLNA server, SAMBA Shares (Windows file-sharing), VPN server, and the Transmission bit-torrent server. The final piece of the schema is a new toy: Subsonic. This gives you web-based media streaming to watch your content anywhere via a web-browser.