[TriLUG] What Distro Would You Recommend?

[Brian Weaver]

Without trying to start a distro war I'd like to get some decent input so I
can attempt to make a sound decision for once in my life. I have a server
that I'm running at home that I need to upgrade. I'm currently running
Mandrake 9.2 (FiveStar) release. It has been a long time since I've been
able to update the box and I need to move to a currently supported
distrobution for security reasons. I have another box I was planning on
making my primary server, just so I could turn on the old one if something
went wrong.

The problem I have is which distrubution makes the most sense from a
stability and supportability. The two that I've been messing with are CentOS
4 and Debian Sarge, other suggestions are welcome. I would investigate Linux
>From Scratch, but I have a minimal amount of time. Basically, I'm going to
have to struggle to get the time necessary to setup server initially. After
that I'm only going to have minimal, if any, time to tune or tweek. My
requirements are pretty simply....

1) Postfix, fetchmail, procmail, mutt, mysql and DBMail for 2 users. (both
mail users use imap)
2) Samba for Windows 2K and Mac OS X file sharing.
3) Printing from Windows 2K (cups)
4) SSH for remote access.
5) Iptables, etc for hardening where necessary
6) Software Raid and/or drivers for 3ware raid cards.
6) Down the road Apache/PHP may be necessary, java would be a nice to have.

The box will sit behind a linksys firewall and the only "exposed" port is
for the SSH server.