I am thinking of setting up a local server here at my house for assisting my advancement of learning PHP. I am curious if anyone has any opinions on what the best Linux distro is for this.... let's hear it, the good, bad, and ugly. I downloaded Ubuntu but something tells me there may be something better as a server, Fedora maybe?
If you only want a server to assist your PHP learning, Ubuntu is a good choice, it is easy to use, update and install new packages. If what you want is a true server, ubuntu may be a bad choice. You may want to take a look at CentOS. Fedora is also not a good server dist.
Yes I agree centos is a good choice. Very "redhat" so you'll be familiar with fedora and other redhat derivatives as well if you use centos. The other option is debian which does things differently but is considered a good server os too. BTW you don't need linux to learn php. You can install php on windows with apache or iis.
If your purpose is to learn PHP, then it really doesn't matter very much which operating system you choose. Go with what you already have installed and don't look back. If your purpose is to learn Linux administration along with PHP, then I'd recommend choosing a new distro every two months and reinstalling from scratch until you have made up your own mind about which one is the best. Don't forget to include FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. Eventually, you will find yourself wanting features of PHP that were not compiled into your distro's version of PHP and you will have to compile it yourself. When you reach this point, it matters less and less which distro you use because you will be modifying it so heavily to suit your own needs anyway.
Not Fedora, it is a development version with a support of 3 months and Fedora Legacy doesn't seem very active, Ubuntu is good for desktop but I feel Centos is best overall.
Yes, this is my purpose. I have had LAMP shared hosting for some time now but I thought it would be nice to learn server admin along with expanding my PHP learning.
Like someone said before if you want to learn just php it doesn't matter what linux distro you use. If you want to learn Linux and eventually use it professionally, you should learn them in this order: RedHat Enterprise Server RedHat Enterprise Desktop Fedora CentOS SuSe I have worked for some of the larges companies in the world as a Senior Unix Architect (Oracle, IBM etc..) when it comes to Linux everyone out there wants RedHat. I've never been asked in a job interview how my Ubuntu skills where. I have been asked in interviews about Fedora and Suse, some Govt agencies here in Colorado use SuSe so its a good OS to brush up on.
I would put that list of Linux distros in a different order. I would still leave RedHat Enterprise Server first but I'd put Debian second and some version of Solaris third. I have never been asked in an interview how my Ubuntu skills were either but I certainly have been asked about Solaris and FreeBSD. Oddly enough, interviews rarely seem to ask about RedHat or Debian or Suse for me... they're all just "Linux" to the guys running the interview. They seem to care more whether you know PHP 4 or PHP 5 than whether you know your Ubuntu from your Debian. Of course, if you're looking at Solaris then I'd suggest learning Java and JSP... Banks seem to use that combination a lot... and they pay very well.
Solaris and BSD are NOT Linux. My main OS is Solaris, it know it better then any other OS but it still isn't Linux.
Joobz, you may want to take a look at the following "Linux Distribution Chooser" http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php
Fedora for me. Have always used RedHat in the past too. Although first distro I ever used was Slackware (was there anything else back then?)
If you want a "virgin" distribution, Slackware is a good choice. But, Slackware has not been accepted as a "business use" distro.
@chrissyj Yes, Slackware is an excellent platform for setting up a real server and teaches you a lot if you're new to Linux. It is still my favourite distro, though I hardly use it anymore. Ubuntu has really revolutionized the desktop and Slackware isn't usually an option when looking for dedicated hosting.
Fedora is designed more for desktop usage. CentOS is what I have used throughout the years for servers.