I have a desktop that I do not use for anything in to a personal server. It's going to be doing a lot of things for me like being my GIT repo and some other things I can't remember but I haven't done yet because they require some kind of server.

I tried to install CENTos but I'm not really familiar with it. What would be the best Server OS for a personal server that is running on an internal network? I don't need it to be the easiest but I shouldn't have to spend hours trying to install GIT or something simple like that.

If it comes down to it, you can always head over to distrowatch.com

Personally, I use Fedora on my server.

It looks like you are already using ubuntu, nothing wrong with having ubuntu server, too. remove desktop environment to free up some ram if needs be.

You could always install ESXi or Xen on it, then virtualize a bunch of different OS's until you find one you like.

Distrowatch is your friend: but finding exactly what you want/need can be interesting.
I have run CentOS, but needed more current packages and kernel. Debian answered that need for my home network.

Most distributions that are not specifically desktop (or derived from one) should serve well. I like CentOS and Debian because their repositories (Debian in particular) have nearly everything anyone could imagine wanting on a server.

Ubuntu server has some nice points, but it has been my experience that Ubuntu does better on teh desktop side of things.

For real focus, you might consider listing all of your most urgent needs in a server and look for a distro or appliance that provides exactly what you most need.

I have been using Ubuntu server edition for a few years now. I have been quite pleased with it. More recently, for a work application, I used Slackware 13.1. Slackware isn't the easiest to learn and configure, but the package management is very flexible, especially if you use the build from source scripts to compile your own packages. If I were to do the Ubuntu systems over again, I think I would go with Slackware instead.

Debian also seems to be a very popular server distribution. One thing about Debian is that it has a slower release process. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it helps ensure stability, but it can also leave you a bit more behind.

Boy, what a flame war this could be. Good thing the guys here are all pro-linux and not necessarily pro-one distro.

distrowatch as mentioned is good.

CentOS' biggest problem is, imo, a lack of dedication from Red Hat. I want to recompile the sources from Red Hat and release ComatOS but blah. Why? I would have to find all the red hat logos to strip them out to be able to distribute it. Plus God knows what legal responsibilities there are.

I was a CentOS user but considering they have not been keeping up with new Red Hat releases, i have fallen behind. Like othres, I want recent copies of files. I still have CentOS on my server at the house but thats because all it does is house my code, back it up, and serve samba shares to the wife so she can store data there.

I run Ubuntu 10.something... 4 i think... on my laptop as my primary "at home" OS. So far the only reason I go to my windows partition is to play football manager -- which runs poorly under wine and not at all in a vm.

It has been a GREAT switch.

Oh, and if you REALLY want a home grown, roll-your-own, legal-in-some-states-with-a-prescription Linux, go to linuxfromscratch.org. Its a marvelous site.

Alright, thanks everyone. I wasn't sure if I wanted to use Ubuntu but I guess I could just start off with it and move from there when I'm more comfortable. I wonder if using arch for this would be a good choice? The machine is a bit older.
I'm going to try that on the more powerful machine then. I have been wanting to do some virtualization so maybe I'll get started with that first to find my perfect server OS

Im personally running Debian 6.0.1 on my home servers. Debian may have a slower release process, but it is stable, tried and tested and security patches are distributed quickly in my experience. Package management is excellent and easy to use if you are familiar with apt-get apt-cache and dpkg.

I have used Debian since 'woody' and can't say a bad thing about it

Out of curiosity, what about it made you unsure? How old is the machine? What does it have for resources? One thing about servers is that it is common to run them without a GUI and some versions like Ubuntu go further my not even containing the packages for a Desktop. This tends to increase the performance dramatically. I ran Ubuntu Server Edition on a 13 year old PC for a while before a HD crash prompted me to get something newer.

If you have no requirements for a Red Hat based distro (such as compatibility with some application) then just go with whatever you are already comfortable with. That will make setup and maintenance much easier. And as already discussed most of the time a server is setup "headless" so there is no need to install a GUI, so even an older less powerful computer will work just fine. Heck I still have an old Sun machine which is probably about 20+ years old running as a server at home which is only a 125Mhz CPU and 351MB of RAM and it does just fine.

Personally I prefer Debian.
It runs smoothly even on a vm with 38Mb of usable ram
and still consumes just 8Mb after a fresh install (without any servers and desktop!)
It doesn't installs a lots of services by default(as CentOS)
which you might not be needing.
may be that is a biased answer but you can surely give Debian a try.

U can install Xen and start creating VMs in 30 minutes:

1. Downlod Iso from xen (15 minutes)
2. boot from iso, let it wipe out the drive
3. feed it an ip address / router
4. Install xencenter on a pc somewhere
5. connect to the ip address you specified
6. right click the server, new vm, pick OS and put a cd in the drive to install it

debian is to redhat as ubuntu is to fedora

I am debating debian myself. But I finally got football manager working under ubuntu 10.10 / wine. =)

I really want to roll my own though. Just so I can say I have done it.

I second that, a CLI-only Debian Squeeze with Samba, Apache, vsftpd, SSH and rsync-daemon running, is consuming here 57MB at the moment. But I think that will not be different with other distros if you are runnin CLI only. Have to test that with Slackware.