I've been running a FreeNAS box for a few years now and have learned a little bit about the *nix architecture and command line in the process. I'm now running into the limitations of FreeNAS and there's some things I want to install that don't support FreeBSD.
I feel confident enough in my skills to setup a full Linux distro with samba and afp shares, which is pretty much all I need from the FreeNAS setup, so I'm wondering what benefit I get from running FreeNAS over a full Linux distro. Obviously I get the ability to administer it over the web, but I kinda like SSH-ing in from my Mac and tinkering that way. I don't use the ZFS file system that FreeNAS has, so my only concern is that I'm missing something in my assessment?
If I do go with a full distro, can people recommend one that befits my needs. I've played with Ubuntu recently, but as it seems more engineered to a desktop environment (I say that because it boots straight into a GUI) I wonder whether I be better off with something more low key?
Thanks in advance, Anthony