I want to know the collective opinion. What would be the best Linux server distro for this setup:

-- Needs to run of later K6-2 and early P3s.
-- Has to play nice with Windows 2000 and XP SP2. Especially needs to be able to easily share files out to those systems.
-- Has to fit on 10 Gb HDs and 128 Mb RAM.
-- Needs Apache 2.
-- Needs PHP 5.
-- Would prefer Squirrel Mail interface.
-- Is running as a web server using our own PHP code for content management. Mostly article delivery.

The current server is 2000 Pro with Apache 2 and PHP 5. There are inherent limitations that go with that; for example, the web server PHP function for "Mail this story to a friend" seems to just pick any good time in the next two hours to actually send things out.

That's a bit annoying.

I've previously worked with Slackware (personal favorite), Mandrake (actually used for art department!!), and Caldera (for an auction management system I used to support).

All opinions are welcome.

Thanks.

I have (almost seamlessly) switched all of our old windoze servers over to slackware and they are running better than ever before. I have even had users comment on the increased speed and reliability!:)

I think ive read some where that RED HAT is the best linux for server choice

Re Red Hat....I would agree in some ways. If you fork out $£$ for Red Hat Enterprise as opposed to Fedora then you should be well supported if anything goes wrong.

I've been testing the machine with Fedora Core. What's weird is that the desktop systems perform pathetically compared to Mandrake, when you avoid the desktop altogether, the server functions work better than anything else around.

Hmmm.

I've run it thru three versions of the CMS system, and everyone runs better on the FC. The search system has actually become much faster.

I'm not sure why desktop underperforms. Gnome seems to work better than KDE.

If anyone has any tips on how to get KDE 3.4 running better, I'm all ears.

YES!!!

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the BEST!!

Try White Box Linux project, i'm using this one im my server. It is a redhat enterprise in action but whitout updates from redhat.com :)

www: http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/
Last version: 4
Run in to: i386 (32bit Intel Pentium™ & AMD Athlon™)
: x86_64 (64bit AMD Opteron™ Athlon64™ & Intel™ ia32e)

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White Box Enterprise Linux RedHat Enterprise rulllz