The quick summary is...it works!

I came here after an older post of mine when I tried to do this under 6.3 and 6.7, and Tim sent me here. Now that I've reimaged the server with 7.1 and have a new video card (GTX 960) I decided to give this a go. I haven't done the VNC install yet, but that brings me to two questions.

1. Tim suggested a few add'l packages to add below (like Thunderbird "is a must") and I'd like to add VLC from videolan.org which I also consider a "must add". Now that we have a GUI, is there a GUI package manager that I can download and install now so I don't have to manually download everything and 'yum install'? i.e. a full Gnome or KDE desktop would have this.

2. While trying different Linux packages (I use Linux Mint on two old desktops) I came across a nice installation package for Fedora that installs all of the background missing stuff that you'd need on a typical desktop, except the GUI installer that I mentioned above. It's at http://easylifeproject.org if you'd like to see what I mean.

ClearOS isn't Fedora I know. ClearOS is based on CentOS, which comes from RedHat that spins off Fedora as a desktop environment. So, I'm crossing my fingers that all of this stuff can be installed to bring ClearOS up to an easy media server with light web surfing, i.e. streaming online video as well.

I did install the nvidia .run drivers off their web site on ClearOS 6.7 before reinstalling 7.1. That was a bit of work; you have to install gcc and also kernel-devel in order for the nvidia install to create a new kernel, and this would have to be manually run again after every Kernel upgrade. It did work somewhat as I was able to run Folding at Home on the video card but it only worked with Core 21. The others would crash.

If I can get the full driver set to work, I really only use this server as a file server and may be able to install Steam for example to run a few Linux games. This is pretty much uncharted territory on ClearOS I know and getting off topic. Once I get the GUI fully setup (questions 1 and 2) if all goes well, I'll start a new thread.

Thanks Dave & Tim!