I ask this in all seriousness. Hopefully it won't get me negged to death.

I am in the process of designing a new house for my family (just my wife and I, all our kids are grown). I've been about 3feet deep into 'home automation for dummies' and I love the concept, enough to want to implement it in my own house. Now, assuming $$ is no object, my question is which OS platform should I base my server from?

So far I've decided there'll be a dualnet setup in my house, isolating the 'god server' from the real world as much as possible, the 2nd net will most likely be t1?-csu/dsu-router&firewall-workstations (so we can surf our pr0n at leisure, and the refridgerator can order next week's groceries). I'm planning the 'everyday' workstations to use either XP Pro or RH with gui since Mrs |3 knows not the penguin. What about the server? I mean... it'll be Godlike in all respects - dual processor, maxram, raid5 hotswap, the works. What o/s, and how much automation software is there out there to help me out?