I use SUSE Linux, actually 9.2, which is not a particularly late version, on my own and several clients’ networks. Each of these hosts at least one web site, all of them run a web based database system, one of which is used to totally run a manufacturing workshop, including processing orders,handing out work schedules etc, from the opposite side of the world. Using the Yast administration tool it is very easy to set up the Apache web server, Windows server and client along with the postfix mail server (I use this in conjunction with the Dovecot IMAP server and Squirrrelmail) and use secure smtp receiving to secure the mail. If have created user control databases which automatically set up allowed email users, authorisation for users to access their own parts of the site for admin, and in some cases control the access of Windows users to file services. It also has tge facility for software raid, although I would not contemplate this until you gain experience, but you could then do a server re-install to incorporate it. The only thing I find it better to do manually while learning the system is to copy the default Apache domain configuration to the /etc/apache2/vhosts.d directory, and then modify the individual domain configuration and save each as a separate domain.conf file, and include /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/*.conf so that I can create, modify and remove domains without risking other domains being affected. If you decide to go this route, contact me for any advice.

Take any linux build, slap Apache on it, download php from the internet and pay for a domain name. Voila! You have a web server.

I’d recommend trying the Ubuntu server. I haven’t tried it myself (just Ubuntu Workstation), but Ubuntu is very newbie-friendly and has good community support at the forums (which are at http://www.ubuntu.com).