"1. Set up a media server. There are many, many ways to go about doing this. There is the old tried and true file server approach, using either NFS or Samba.
"However, if it's only music you're sharing, you probably want something more like Firefly or Tangerine, which can share all of your music with the other computers and devices on your network with DAAP (this is the same music sharing technology iTunes uses). Most Linux music players provide this capability as well. If you want to access your music from anywhere in the world, you could set up Jinzora, which is a web based music server...
"2. Set up a download server. Centralize all your downloads to one Linux powered server. Get your Usenet downloads with HellaNZB or SABnzbd+. Get your torrents with Transmission, Vuze (formerly Azureus), TorrentFlux, Deluge or MonoTorrent. All of the software mentioned in this section has a web interface of some kind."
