Networking & wireless forum: 4 OS network? Computer on two networks?

Hi,

No laughing.

2 Questions:

1. My network at home is embarrassingly not networked. I have all file sharing/print sharing disabled. I would like to change all of that. My computers have OSX, Windows 7, XP Pro, and a few flavours of Linux. I have a computer I would like to make make my server/firewall. What beginner-friendly OS is best for such? GUI's are nice! If I have a server doing such functions, do I set my router to Pass-through (or some such?)?


2. I tricked one of my employers into buying satellite broadband access for me. Haha! I already have cable broadband. The only place the satellite dish could be put was on my workshop, which is @ 500 feet from my house. The satellite feed goes into a modem and WIFI router. I have a workstation and a laptop in the workshop. I built a cute little dish for receiving the WIFI signals from the workshop WIFI router. The dish is installed in my attic (basically). The signal strength is solid. I just bought two modern thin clients on eBay.

In my attic I would like to have the receiver dish->router->thin client? Can I have this "attic thin client" on two networks? I want to have it on my house network so that I can control it from my main computer (mainly for transferring data). I want to have the thin client connecting to the internet through my satellite feed network.

Is this even possible?

I have been playing with Linux for about 5 years. I have tried many, many distributions. I have never tried a server-specific distro, but I am willing to give it a shot. This experimenting has really helped me learn more about networking and different OS's than anything else.

Thanks ahead of time.

-Jaime

P.S. Bonus question: My nearest neighbour is 1.2 miles away. Can I disable encryption on my WIFI network to gain ANY speed? It is very fast now, I was just curious.