My buddy wants to use an old dell tower i found I had laying around as an FTP server and I'm wondering what distribution would work best for use as an FTP server for the older system. I'm hoping for something with a rather headache free install or at least good documentation. Also if anybody could recommend a good FTP server to run that would be great as well.

as usual any and all help is much appreciated

Oddly enough, I'd recommend Slackware because I'm used to installing it with only the stuff I need. If you're new to that side of Linux you could try something like Fedora which warns you if you try and install something and the dependencies aren't satisfied.

Generally speaking, whatever you end up choosing, don't install things you obviously won't need. When you've got everything installed check what's running with netstat, ps, nmap etc. and get rid of stuff you obviously don't need.

Whatever's left that you're not sure about is where the questions start

I use sftp or vsftpd depending on the environment. If you don't need ssh and have no security issues with plain ftp - vsftpd seems pretty easy to configure as well as to find docs for.

Hope that helps - sorry I have no penguins or haitians close by!