although you can set up servers with just about every distro what specific server based distro have you tried and your thoughts on them?
I have tried sms, netthesys, freenas, centos, ubuntu server, pclos server, univention corporate, and oracle.
all work well with web ui but a couple have there own gui built in.
I just downloaded the latest version of oracle (7.6 i think)
it gives you the option during set up to choose web ui or install with a gui. (I did web ui) and downloaded the manuals to review later.
just playing around with it I Installed it on an old dual core with 8 gig of ram and 4 disk raid 1 ( fast 
)
a lot faster than i expected!
I cant wait to try it in a new server
RPM - CentOS, Scientific, RHEL, Fedora. I generally run Cent for everything except maybe IPA, and at my current gig, Openshift nodes (though I see no problem running origin in prod). IPA is generally so mission critical, and misunderstood by most people, that they just lean on RHEL for support. I’ve run it in Prod on both Fedora and on Debian. Openshift has a lot of complexity to it, and when you don’t have any real “hit by a bus” insurance for the guy who knows it best, you pay RH for that safety net.
Deb - Debian, Ubuntu. Early on in the docker days, ubuntu had some app armor integrations that were nice. Since then I’ve learned to run SELinux on my docker hosts and have really lost the need to ever run ubuntu in production. Debian, is just Debian and is great.
Basically it comes down to what people’s preferences are. For my desktop I tend to stick with Ubuntu, but for servers I generally lean to CentOS or Debian depending on what distros the company I’m in is used to working with.
I actually prefer RPM based distros because I’m better at managing custom RPMs than I am at custom debs. I’ve had to do both, and don’t really have a problem with either, rpmbuild just clicks the most with me. I’ve also worked with folks that have had a mental block to rpmbuild, so it’s really just whatever works.
FreeBSD is my server OS of choice, check it out! (BUT note it does not come with a web GUI).
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I’m currently using fedora and ubuntu server. Didn’t have any issues yet (knock on wood). I am not demanding a lot of my two systems, it’s for home use only. Although I am not using a web ui, I am doing ssh only.
Have fun with your tinker system!
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i was kind of impressed it was running that fast on that old of a system.
I can just imagine the performance improvement on a system with better resources.
what i’d like to do is set it up as a forum backup server.
our admins other server got nailed (flood) and was down for 2 weeks a while ago and my location is well away from flooding or tornado problems
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I’ve tried CentOS, and Debian (no GUI) before. And some Ubuntu Server on a Raspberry Pi once.
Might go to CentOS when I get one of those old refurbished servers.
I have a couple CentOS servers at work and a Ubuntu Server at home.
I use Debian and Ubuntu at home for most things, I want to try out Fedora and Cent at some stage because of all the good reviews.
At work I have a heap of servers running SLES for file/print/domain services (Novell), i can’t complain about them, some have 400+ days uptime.
Also have a Solaris cluster running old Reality databases but I mostly only deal with the application layer on that one so can’t really comment on the OS itself, other then I can never remember it going down.