Thanks man, downloading now about to get into it. What flavor of Linux would be the server equivalent of what Windows Server is to Windows 7/XP/8..redhat?
I'm not in the Linux world like that anymore( use to be into it heavy when I was a teenager) and I know now they have some distro's that are geared more towards the desktop like Ubuntu. But really any favor can be used as a server.
During the installation, they give you the option of what to install and If you miss something you can always grab what you need off the net.
Linux has always been a server/programmers OS first and desktop OS second.
I forgot to add, you can als look into CentOS which is the unsupported version of Red Hat's OS. Most companies that use Linux use Red Hat or SUSE from what I've seen.