Low end PC as home server, what package should I install?

[Robert Sweetnam]

Apologies to all, formatting in my reply was a bit messed up to say the 
least.
Below is my reply in full minus original text.

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Agreed,

If you only happen to have the install media for Ubuntu Desktop then by 
all means install what you need to. However it would be best to set your 
runlevel to 3 which is full multi-user with networking and some services.

This will ensure that in the event of an unexpected reboot that your 
machine will boot up 'console only' i.e. no graphical display or window 
manager etc running in the background. It should also ensure that your 
network services such as Samba etc. will still run on booting.

You can do this by the following steps:

1.  Make a backup of /etc/inittab

2. Edit /etc/inittab and somewhere in the first 5 lines is an entry for 
the default runlevel. On my machine it looks like this:

# The default runlevel.
id:5:initdefault:

3. To make runlevel 3 the default, change the 5 in the example above to 3. 

If access to X is needed then at a console on the physical machine you 
can simply enter the command:

startx 

Provided X has been configured. Which is likely if you use the desktop 
distribution.

Regards
Robert