Hi all. I didn't post for a long time, and now I need advice on a problem.

I have desktop workstastation with the following parameters:
HP Workstation xw series 64bit
2xXeon 3.2GHz
2Gb ram
73Gb hdd

I want to use it as server to host my personal page and to learn to manage server, apache and etc. I doubt which distro to use. I used slackware 13 before on my laptop as desktop OS. Also I heard that CentOS is easy to update and manage. Which distro is good for that?

Thanks in advance!

Then go for slackware, or debian

CentOS is not that easy to manage if you don't turn off the extra security (SELinux), but if you take the time to learn it, it worth it. It is a stable and secure distribution with long term (7 years) support for each versions, so you don't have to upgrade every X months.

And what about SUSE. I see that they have Mono version. This could be helpful if I decide to run some aspx site..

Debian, CentOS, SuSE Enterprise Server (NO OPENSUSE!!), RedHat Enterprise Server. Those are the true workhorses for server (incl. very stable packages/updates, and support. And the update support is several years, which is important)

Personally, I like Debian for servers, but CentOS is good too.

Any disto can do what you want. When they say server they mean big complex systems made to handle google or ebay.

Dunno what is wrong with opensuse. Just fine.

Consider the top 20 at distrowatch.com All are good for some reason or two.

Any server distribution need to fit some basic criteria, OpenSUSE don't match them. First, it have to have a very, very long support cycle, because you don't want to upgrade often on a server, any server. You just want ti to sit there open forever. After that, you want tested packages, not the latest and greatest, but proven one with some (not total) code review. Those are the two main criteria for a server distro. The server can be a pentium 3 or 4 in a closet. It does not matter, but the distro have to meet those points.

Some other, like security policy and managing tools are also good for bigger setup, but mostly unused for closet servers.

I doubt between slackware and debian. I do not think to upgrade server oftenly. I need a long time solution which just work and didn't make trouble so I have the time to fucus on other things.
I will review pro and cons of the both varants.

Thank you all for your replies.