RedHat, *BSD? Basic login installation (like NT)

1) Open and Free BSD have appeared in a PC World article as being more secure than other Linux's (in respect to buffer overflow security). Apart from this, what is the real difference between the different flavours of BSD and also between *BSD and RedHat6.2? Which one is more suited to using for a simple 10 user network (instead of NT4).

2) As per above, I am trying to get away from NT4 (Microsoft actually) but am having trouble figuring out how to install my copy of RedHat6.2. Specifically, I am trying to set up Samba to validate my login and run a little script file to map the appropriate drives on my Win95/Win98 PC's and am about to give up, which would be another victory for Microsoft (which I am trying to avoid). Can anyone help?

3) Once I have set this up, I would like to set up a simple mail server to dial up the internet every hour, deliver any outgoing mail, check for new mail for every user (seperate accounts) and have this available for people to pick up using Outlook 97. Any help with this would be nice also.

Thanx, Andreas

All of those things should be covered in the Linux Documentation Project.

Look here: www.linuxdoc.org