I currently just removed my Windows Server 2003 OS from my server and am trying Linux out. I've tried Fedora Core 5, and currently have Ubuntu on it. I just don't know though, I have Ubuntu on my PC and love it. Running my server, I just don't think it has a lot of tools to make things easier for me. Am I wrong? What distro would you recommend me to use? Here's what I want it to do:

1. File server, simple enough use Samba
2. Intranet server: able to have a "homepage" with various links and RSS feeds.
3. Secure FTP server: Be able to run an sftp server
4. Work well with Serial ATA
5. Stable

Any ideas?

Give http://www.slackware.com a whirl.
All the services you're looking for are provided in the default installation.

First be warned, you asked a religeous question. You'll see people suggesting their favourite. So next time you ask such a question, think twice, may be several more times.

Then your problems can be solved easily by many mainstream distros. RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Debian Sarge (Current Stable Debian Branch), Gentoo, etc.

RHEL or free alternatives such as CentOS, Tao, etc. are stable and are the most widely used. So when you are trying to find help more likely you'll find someone using them. SLES provides a nice & easy GUI configuration and management program called YAST2. Debian comes with the proven package management system apt-get. My personel choice would be from the above three, because they are stable, easy to maintain, and are common in use. Gentoo provides an optimised system, but it's a bit more troublesome to setup and maintain and sometimes known to break after upgrades. Ubuntu only aimed desktop usage, but starting from 6.06 (not released yet) there will be a enterprise version too. All of the above have 64bit versions, too.

RHEL - Commercial
SLES - Commercial
Debian - Non-commercial
CentOS - Non-commercial
Gentoo - Non-commercial
Ubuntu - Non-commercial

So go ahead and and make your own decision. Good luck.

I would choose debian(the stable distribution) because of package administration, maintenance, stability. Any other distro can do the job, but i find debian easier to maintain.