What linux is good for websites?
 

What Linux is best for websites? Does it really matter at all? I am using Ubuntu and have PHP5 and MySQL all setup with Apache2, does it really matter which Linux I use?

It can. If all you want to do is fool around with LAMP, most (all?) GNU/Linux distros should do the trick. If it's for high-performance production-quality web-based whatever, there might be some gain to be had by optimizing the machine for that task--in which case you probably want to look into one of Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Damn Small Linux and Linux From Scratch (I like debian, but I haven't tried any of the other ones).

Hope this answers your question --Jonas

That helps a lot... So if I just have my site hosted it shouldn't be so bad to use Ubuntu, right? Later if I want to expand and host more sites with better quality then one from your list would best suit the case?

The underlying principle is "you don't pay for what you don't use". I believe the distros I mentioned offers the feature of not using everything and the kitchen sink. If the machine is a dedicated web server, there's no real nead for it to have an x server, or sound or graphics drivers, or cute little games, or CD burning apps. I don't know how much you can strip from ubuntu before it starts acting screwed up, but I suspect quite a bit. Maybe as much as debian? I don't really know.

But basically the reason I recommend those distros is that I believe that they allow you to optimize away all the things you won't be using on a dedicated web server. Ubuntu (or FC, or SuSE, or Mandrake, or ...) may offer the same benefits, but I'm more unsure about those.

Does that answer your question? --Jonas

As does practically every other distribution out there. You can even install SuSE and Mandriva with no graphical environment if you so choose, and recompile the kernel to your heart's content.