Hi

I am wanting to find out which distro is the best to use to suit my needs, it seems some a re totally aimed toward desktop and others to server.

I am looking for something halfway it appears, I want to set up a webserver initially for development only as I am still learning while building a website for a possible home business. I also am currently learning python and will go onto perl after that .

I will need to be able to plug in usb devices such as digital camera so might require a 2.6 kernel .

While I want the distro to serve a work and learning function, I also want to be able to listen to some tunes watch a DVD when its time to relax.

I don't really require anyhting in the way of games.

Documentation is also really important to be able to access.

What distro would you think would meet and beat these requirements?

Every Linux distro can do what you are asking for since it's really easy to customize your own. However, if you don't want (or simply don't have the time) to do so, I recommend you to install a Redhat Enterprise based distro for which you will easily find a lot of server and development packages.

Personally, I have many CentOS distro (a free Redhat Enterprise Linux 4.1 distro) with kernel 2.6 and Gnome 2.6 installed on servers and they are all running like a charm. The update servers are always very up to date (ie. Firefox 1.0.7 compared to my Firefox 1.0.6 which is the only version available on my personal Mandriva 2006 distro) and very fast.

I think you will be happy with this kind of distro...

http://www.centos.org/

Centos I was looking at that one after reading a few reviews about it and sounds pretty good. I was considering using debian but would have to use 'etch' to access the 2.6 kernel. Any ideas about PC-BSD or any of the BSD's though the install instructions for these look fairly daunting.

Some will say BSD is better suited for a server environment than Linux and linux is better suited for the desktop.

PC-BSD was designed to be more of a desktop environment than a server one, from what i am told by my BSD counterparts.

Is there any BSD's in your opinion that would be worth the trouble to install (that would provide significant benefit) I assume all BSD's Open Net and Free are hard to install but is one easier or better. or should I go with something like CENTOS, Debian or Slackware.