Best distro choise for newb & some advice pls

[Planet_Jeroen]

Hi all,

I'm currently running a P2 with SuSE 9.3 and a P2 with SuSE 10 as servers. Every howto I come across deals with Debian or Fedora tho.

Since I'm new to Linux (about 6 months experience on SuSE, mostly using Putty and text based yast, so limited knowledge of the commands atm) I don't know the differences between distro's.

I have 2 P2's that I want to use as 'server'.
-One for mail
-One for www,ftp,webdav
(maybe that could be done on the same box ?)

On either one, or on the free one, if the previous tasks can be safely combined (security wise) I'll also want to run SAMBA and perhaps later LDAP.



ATM I have half of it running (no mail / ldap) on 2 machines: samba on 1 (alongside a half complete postfix setup), web on the other.

I would like a few pointers as to:
- which OS would be best in my situation, taking in account the above
- what would be best-practise when I need to combine the roles mentioned on 2 systems.

I need it to be as secure as possible, in the sence that the presence of role [A] isnt a security risk for role [B], taking in account that I asked to combine them on 2 machines.


Any help/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Jeroen


**EDIT: Is it correct that "The Perfect Setup" howto deals with all of this but the SAMBA/LDAP part ? If so, the question can be skipped to which OS :/ Sorry in that case for posting without searching better.

[danf.1979]

You could take a look at ubuntu-server. It's very friendly debian based distro. Security will be up to you (as with all other distros).
www.ubuntulinux.org

[Planet_Jeroen]

Okay... so is it correct that it realy doesnt matter which distro I use and that it all boils down to preference ? In that case, what would be the one that gives the most 'uniform' hands-on-practise for LPI and usage in a company (server) environment ?

Is there noone who can comment on combining those roles on 2 low end machines ?


Thank's for the help so far.


Jeroen

[falko]

Okay... so is it correct that it realy doesnt matter which distro I use and that it all boils down to preference ? In that case, what would be the one that gives the most 'uniform' hands-on-practise for LPI and usage in a company (server) environment ?
It really doesn't matter. You can take any distro you like. I'd recommend Debian or Ubuntu, but it's up to your personal preference.

Is there noone who can comment on combining those roles on 2 low end machines ?
You can do it with any distro.

[Planet_Jeroen]

Thanks for the help, I'll try 'em both in that case. Thanx again.