How to tame a Linux server?

  Okay I've decided to confront my Unix phobia head-on.
  I used to be a Unix programmer, many moons ago, when I was a grad student at the University of Wisconsin. It was my first interactive experience with a computer. I remember it fondly. And what I have to do with this Unix server is not very ambitious. Here's the deal.
  It's a server running on Slicehost, which they have given me to play with for $0. Can't beat that deal.
  It's got Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (lucid) freshly installed. I have root access, and have been able to log on via SSH. All is good so far.
  Here's what I want to do:
  1. Get Apache running. Apparently it's not running now on the server.
  2. Install a GUI that I can use over VNC. I basically need to be able to edit text files. In a pinch I could do without this if the FTP access is good.
  3. Make sure FTP is working so that I can FTP into the HTTP directory.
  4. SMB server set up so I can access the file system from my Mac desktop at home and from my Windows servers.
  Maybe there's another version of Linux that would be easier to set up? Here's a screen shot that shows what my other choices were (although some of them may have a surcharge).