Hello All,
I was wondering what I need to use to give people remote access to files a linux server. It would include access to network drives, depending on the user. I was thinking about FTP, but as login info is passed in plain text, I had to rule that out. So, if anyone can point me in the right direction as to which programs I need to use, that would be great.

Thanks!

P.S. I haven't decided on any particular distro yet, so if one is particularly suited to this, then I am open to suggestions.

The best bet (if the users can be trusted) for remote access is ssh and sftp ... there are many free windows clients and the passwords are encrypted.

The best free client Windows client I have seen is from ssh.com .... from other linux machines, sftp from the command prompt works fine.

Once logged in via ssh, just hit the folder to transfer files ... if your users can use windows explorer, they can use this client....

For another linux machine ... just use fish://user@IP_address to browser files on another server via sftp/ssh...

You just need to setup sshd on any linux distro as the file server. But a distro that has rapid security fixes (Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, SUSE, RedHat/Fedora) would be good...Acually WhiteBox Enterprise Linux (a RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 Advanced Server clone) would be excellent for this.

Brill! Thanks for the help!