help choosing a distro

[nineocmouse]

hello,

i am going to be building a new linux box in the very near future, and would really appreciate some advice/input on choosing a distro.

the purpose, or what machine will be used for, will be a web server running a wiki on the public internet that serves a very small number of users. to put in perspective, 50-100 HTTP hits per 24hrs would be considered a very busy day.

requirements, roughly in order of importance:
0. free or open source or GPL, preferably all three.
1. security, since this machine will be exposed to the public internet, at least on tcp port 80.
2. stability. i wanna set it (up) and forget it.
3. ability to run and play nice on older pc hardware, such as x386 32bit architectures, pentium 3, 4, core duo, etc.
4. latest/newer release LAMP stack, with strong support for Perl and PHP. do not care about Python.
5. an os installation procedure that is relatively painless. i DO NOT want to be compiling kernels manually.
6. lightweight and/or an installation experience that lets you choose which components to install, so i can build a small bloat-free system tailored to my needs.
7. a rich set of device drivers to maximize the chances that my ethernet card will work after installing the os.
8. samba will run on it.


things that would be nice to have, but are not absolutely necessary, roughly in order of importance:
0. good documentation / manuals / books / support pages / forums, etc.
1. samba. will install samba from source if necessary but would be nice if included in the distro.
2. a system layout similar to Red Hat Linux, which is the system i'm most familliar with / been running for years.
3. plays nice with a wide range of third party software.
4. a GUI (if i even decide to install one that is) that closely resembles/works like M$ windows as much as possible.
5. a distro that i can walk into a store and buy the distro cd packaged inside a nice thick well written owners manual for sysadmins.
6. a distro that i can download the os install cd image as an .iso (with md5) and burn the install cd myself.

all advice/input welcome. thank you.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
I'd suggest that you have a shot at CentOS, it's based on RHEL and you should find it relatively familiar if you have used Fedora/Redhat before. The only problem I can see might be the bloat....which you can remove after installation, depending on your need and wants. You can also theme just about any distro to look sorta like Windows and some Desktop Environments have themes specifically for this purpose. But I say who needs a MS clone? Dare yourself to be different and mix things up a little bit, you'll soon forget about Windows themes anyhow,

[GNU-Fan]

Why don't you rent a virtual server?

Seems to catch most points you mentioned.
It costs no more than a few bucks per month and you have:
- no trouble with non working hardware
- a completely set up system to start with
- a button to reset the system to fresh install in a matter of seconds
- a capable internet connection, up 24/7 with fixed IP/URL
- fixed costs including traffic, power, hardware replacements