> What distribution would you reccommend? 
What do you mean by this? Linux distributions??
If this is what you mean I am running my freeradius servers
on the slackware linux distro but it doesn't have to be linux.

It should compile and run on just about any Unix or sufficiently 
Unix-like OS that you have dev tools available to build it on.

> What about the front-end? 
There is a frontend available for freeradius
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dialup-admin/
that appears to work very well. I have had limited 
experience with it though because we maintain 
the database with an in house developed billing system. 

> Are there 
> any decent configuration tools available? 
See Above.

> I have used IAS on Windows 2000 
> before, but I moving steadily away from Microsoft products.
Good Man! It really makes me smile to see someone say that!!
My house and datacenter have been 100% microsoft free for almost
two full years now and counting. It's much cheaper to donate money 
and resources to good opensource projects than pay the MS licensing tax.


David Rodgers