I'll chime in with another plug for my favorite Open Source project.
http://www.amahi.org It has all this stuff, and much, much more pre-configured out of the box. I have used it since 2008. It takes the pain out of setting up Samba Shares, VPN, SSH, etc. There are tons of Apps packaged for one-click install, like DLNA, UPnP, many Multimedia apps, as well as, Developer apps. Amahi itself is free, but a nominal fee is charged for the packaged apps to help fund the project. Current version is based on Fedora 14, but there is a Unbuntu/Debian version in development. There is an active Community and IRC channel (#amahi on freenode.net). Although I've been toying with Linux since 1995, I am no command line guru, so love the ease of use of Amahi.
I do have to admit I am biased, I like it so much that I volunteer my time as part of the Core Team.
I urge anyone interested in a home server, to check out the above link, and/or drop by the IRC Channel if you have questions.
Thanks,
Pat