[:.:Numark:.:]

So what is the best platform to run Apache, MySQL, PHP, MailServers and FTP?

Someone suggested Debain but what is most popular, most reliable, easiest to use and will run a full webserver?

I may look into Samba File servers aswell.

[jwilliams]

somebody asks this more or less every week. search the forum for already thoroughly discussed threads, post questions there if you like

[msound]

There really isn't a "best" platform for running a LAMP server. A lot of it comes down to personal preference. I've always been comfortable with Redhat and Fedora so I chose a free RHEL clone. If you like Ubuntu than you can try Ubuntu 's new server edition. If you're a more advanced user than you may want to g with something like Gentoo, Debian, or Slackware. All will do the job just fine.

[Frederick Stienheld]

To re-enforce what msound has said. Pretty much any distribution will do everything you have mentioned. It just depends what you are comfortable with. If you are new to linux you may want to give redhat/fedora a go, as it is fairly user friendly and will do most of the work for you behind the scenes of a GUI.

Personally I have no reason to run a GUI on my systems so I run debian and do all of the configuring on the command line.