After reading the Apache website I have realized that apache is more of a program than an os like I previously thought.(Am I correct in thinking this?) Now having said that it is obvious with apache I am a noob but I love web design and development so I want to start-up my own webserver. Is there a book or website I could read to get a better understanding of how to work and use Apache? I was also wondering which linux distro works best with it or does it not matter? Plus any tips from you Apache Vets would be appreciated. I think that is all for now. Thanks for the help.

I've just used apache as a hobbyist, so I'm no expert. But yes apache is a program or (in linux you'd call it a "service" or "daemon"). You can install it on any distribution and I believe the configuration file on most distribution is installed to the /etc/apache directory. I personally use debian, but it should be just as easy on whichever distro to use your package manager to install it. Then you just create your html files in the root directory (on debian I believe it defaults to /var/www).

To access your website you can just open a browser on the same machine as apache and type localhost into the address bar. It should open the default apache page.

Now I'm sure there's a lot more information than that if you want to become a guru or system admin, but for a local home network, that's about it. Try to google for your distro name (looks like you use Suse) and apache setup. Here's what I got from a quick google http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/595.html. You should be able to ignore the php and mysql part for now.

For info about Apache, how about the Apache documentation site

Thanks for the help. I'll start at those places. Hopefully they will lead me to others.