I've done a little more "google research" now, and one trend that's obvious is how nice little open source router/NAS distros tend to run for 3-4 years and then go totally commercial. Eg. ClarkConnect most recently.

They're still a great way to get started, especially for MS and Apple fanatics :), and they generally have much, MUCH better web GUIs than a general purpose Linux distro would offer.

But the reason I still "roll my own" using normal distros, is so I can continue to customize and upgrade them to my heart's content. And not be at the mercy of "did they include this feature", since a full distro generally has *everything* except the nice web GUI. Big time sink/investment with this route, though.

Cheers