I am wanting to put together a basic small web server. Right now I have a web on win2k server / IIS 5.0. I would rather run a linux machine to do this. All my web needs is the following:

php support
mysql
email

Now, what would be the best way to do this? Meaning...what distro would be best to run this type of server .. i was thinking slackware .. but I would like other peoples opinions .. thanks for any information you can give me.

Any will do as long as the machine it is on is strictly configured as a webserver, i.e no X, no development tools (gcc, etc), etc.

A good secure out-of-the-box solution would be that of Guardian Digital's "Engarde Linux". I believe it began as a release of Red Hat 6.something and then the team removed everything that you don't need, and turned off everything. There is a Pro release that will put you out about $550 USD or you can download the Community release for free.

A former co-worker used it on our e-mail/web-server and it has been running great. Their web-site is below. This one will definitely meet neo77777's recommendation. (configured as a web-server, no X, no devel tools)

http://www.engardlinux.org/

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Jeremiah

My webserver is based on Debian distribution and it's as secure as it. All you need to do is generally going through the tasks of securing through a logical order ...

I use Slack 8.1 as an e-mail and web server and it works great for me.

awesome! Thanks everyone for the suggestions .. ill go from there!

Apache should work.