1st attempt at server - 2013 - what is the best linux to start with?
 

I'd seen the guides, and was about to try one, but I figured it could not hurt to ask.

If I have a clean slate, what linux version would people recommend I install before I start?

I guess #1 priority is ease of eqemu server setup.

My existing computer room setup has 2 macs logging in using network username/password services from a Fedora Core (ancient, like 5) NIS server with mounted /home. I'd like to move that stuff onto the new linux server that I setup for eqemu so I can just have 1 machine. So I guess that's priority #2.

Actually existing box is FC9.

I work with RH (RHEL, CentOS, etc) and Debian (Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, etc) based distros as a job. My preference between the two styles is Debian. Of the Debian based distros I like Mint, Debian and Ubuntu.

My personal server at home is Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long Term Support), because the LTS versions are supported for 3 years. Since I use my server as a LAN media server, HTPC, EQEmu server, and UUNET indexer, I prefer to have a server that doesn't have to be upgraded every year in order to receive security updates.

Further more, I find Debian's aptitude/apt-get command line package management tool to run circles around RedHat's Yum. Yum makes a nobel effort but falls short in handling dependencies with the same level of polish that aptitude and apt-get have.

I tend to prefer Debian builds as well. As mentioned, Aptitude is very nice, though yum works just as well for most stuff EQEmu related. I have build many servers on both Debian and Fedora, but I find the selinux on Fedora can be a bit of a pain sometimes (though that is probably mostly due to my ignorance with selinux).

The setup for either are very similar (mostly just change apt-get to yum or visa versa in guides) and performance seems about the same as well.