Tech query: running a Mac without a monitor

I believe we're about to take possession of a Mac G4 Tower without a monitor; my tentative plan is to use it as a file server. (This is really motivated by the desire for a keyboard, since my keyboard-cleaning experiment last week was less than totally successful; the computer comes as a bonus :-) I should be able to ssh into it, so I can administer the Unix side of things, but I don't know how difficult it is to administer the Mac side of things remotely. Paying $300 for Remote Desktop seems like overkill for my minimal needs. Has anybody on my tech-savvy flist done this sort of thing?