Please Recommend a Linux Distro for an Apache Webserver

[bladephoenix]

Hi,

I'm new to networking and would like to set up my own webserver. I have just finished setting up a firewall/router/gateway using IpCop 1.4 and am now trying to look for a webserver software to set up the webserver. The server is a P233 w/ 128MB RAM. I was thinking it might not be enough to install a Windows 2000 server, so I decided to install a Linux distro instead. Problem is that I have only had about 1 hr of experience with Linux, so I have no idea what to look for. Can someone recommend me a linux distro for webserving that is relatively easy for a newbie to learn?

Thanks.

 

[TiziteLayinLow]

grab redhat.. im not sure if your system specs will work or not but i ran it with apache and it worked great... i have also messed around with knoppix as a server, just to see how smooth it would be.. and it run 7 days running perfect..

i had my file server mapped to the linux box then apache daemon running to serve it out.. worked like a charm.. any distro should be able to run apache.. its downloadable.. redhat uses more memory because its more gui, but once you get it setup you could shut down the x win enviroment and itll run with less overhead.

hope that helped.. www.linuxiso.org try knoppix if you have a descent speed cdrom.

 

[Sunner]

Redhat Linux doesn't exist anymore, now it's either Redhat Enterprise Linux($$$) or Fedora.
If you go the Fedora route, I'd advice against a GUI, Fedora's GUI is made with cute in mind, rather than resource efficiency.

If you don't mind reading documentation, Debian would make an excellent choice, it's about as easy as it gets to install/upgrade software, so long as you RTFM.

 

[phisrow]

You might do well to consider OpenBSD. If you don't feel like doing some serious messing around with security(and it sounds like you don't) OpenBSD's not at all flashy but paranoid by default behaviour would make your life rather easier. The install process is fairly quick and well documented(albeit not as graphical as Fedora) and once you have a system up, you can pretty much run through Apache's install guide(so doing a text based install doesn't hurt much). Inside of two hours you'll have an efficient, stable, fairly secure server, with pretty much all the things you are likely to need already configured by default.

 

[polm]

Debian http://www.debian.org