flashing linux onto terminal

Hi everyone,

i recently got a Wyse Winterm 3360SE terminal from my work:

full spec list

when i saw the back, i got the idea to turn this into a docking station for external harddisks to connect them to my network. This will really be its only function: a sort of limited file server.
pictures


now i am a linux n00b, but my gut tells me the penguin is the way to go with this. So my question is: what flavor of linux is best for this project, and does anyone have any experience with something like this/know where to look for more info?

any help is appreciated :-)

I have never heard of someone wanting to use a thin client as a storage server before.
How exactly are you going to connect extra hdd's to it?
As i understand it the operating system is pulled off another server so if you want linux on it where will you be pulling the os image from? Will this machine have enough power to actually transfer multiple large files?

well the terminal has a USB poort, so i would use that to hook up the hard drive.

now this thing runs windows CE as OS, but i cant configure that in the way i want to. The OS i want to put on wont need to do much, it doesnt even need a GUI, all i need is for that thing to get an IP and share the external harddrive on the network

also, it almost never will recieve requests for multiple files, its mainly to allow my xbox to watch movies of off my external HDD('s) w/o booting my loud obnoxious PC

so you plan on storing large amounts of data on an usb hdd thats gonna probably be connected to a usb 1.0 port. Your will find that it is gonna be very slow accessing any files. Why not plug it straight into your computer?

anyway if you fancy putting linux on the machine try here you will have to add samba support to actually be able to share all your files.

edit:fix up me bad english