Looking to switch from WHS to CentOS/Fedora

[Cluster]

Hi.

I've been looking for a couple of months now to switch three of my desktops to file servers, basically they either run Windows 7 or Windows Home Server, I want away from Windows, aside from the NTFS file system which is a nightmare for me, I've been doing a lot of research, asking questions, getting people's opinions on what they would do, now I don't want to drop FreeNAS on these box's and a ZFS file system because I don't run a true hardware RAID and software RAID well its not what I want.

My first computer is a Intel i7-870 @ 2.93ghz, 16gb DDR3-1333, (1x1tb) WD Black Boot (6x3tb) WD Green Internal, I do have two 5 bay Sans Digital towers, both full with 2tb & 3tb drives, Now I'm not using the RocketRaid Card provided, that thing is a nightmare to configure in Linux that I've read so I spent 30$ got another eSata port multiplier card Syba. It works even better. Also the computer has 2 6tb WD Externals. (Yes this computer has a lot of storage.) It my home media machine. I've had friend tell me to use Ubuntu Server but I feel as if Ubuntu is going their own way and is behind on where linux stands, I believe Ubuntu uses Kernel 3.1.x at the moment and Fedora is almost at 3.9.x to 4.0.

My second & third computers are virtually the same hardware, AMD APU FM2+ A10-6800k with 16gb of RAM, and massive storage 10x4tb drives, and 10x6tb drives. I don't want to do multiple linux distro's I would like to keep it at one, Fedora has been referred to as community tested meaning when it's released its the people who test it and post on the forum. I've run CentOS on my webserver for years without a problem. I'm just not sure how it will handle as a file server, and headless at that.

My questions are. (1) Can I do a install of CentOS via VNC? (2) Does CentOS support reading/writing NTFS and convert to ext3/4, btrfs. (3) If needed can I add a gui interface if I need too like KDE in case a drive begins to fail. I want the file servers to be online without having to be rebooted often, it can take time to mount several drives, been through it before. Right now WHS on my i7-870 if it does have a windows patch Tuesday it can take up to 7 minutes + to get the machine fully booted mostly because of the eSata boxes. (4) Is there support for RocketRaid 622?

I know most people would boot FreeNAS, NAS4Free, OpenMediaVault on them with a FlashDrive but I've tested those and really i'm not at a point in which I want to run those. I'd rather stick with an OS on the hard drive, install Plex, sit back and let them idle or being accessed by family.

I sound like a noob, I'm sorry if I do its just when I do this I want to do it right the first time, and not have to go back and redo it over and over again, since Fedora 21 doesn't come full DVD and now has Workstation/Cloud/Server its confused me because I'm not trying to run a webserver, just a fileserver with samba/ftp/plex.