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Can it be used also for media files streaming as well as simple file serving?

It depends a bit on what clients you expect to have. Firefly (the new name for mt-daapd) is good for DAAP clients such as Macintoshes and Roku Soundbridges. The Logitech/Slim Devices Squeezebox server software also runs fine on Linux. And, for what it's worth, you can get third-party Rio Receiver server software too.

There isn't, however, a really good Linux media server for the open UPnP standards yet (or, at least, not a free one). There's gmediaserver, but it's not as full-featured as Windows Media Connect. If you have mainly UPnP clients such as MP101 or XBox, WHS is going to be a better bet until Linux catches up.

If you haven't made the choice of client yet either, the Squeezebox is the best IMO: the others either don't do gapless, or don't do FLAC, or both.

Peter