I am currently in the process of setting up my own server for a new IP that I'm working on. Now there are many options as to what OS to use for my server and I have no idea which one to choose. Thats where this community comes in, if you happen to have experience setting up your own server would you mind lending some advice? Obviously I am planning to use a UNIX based OS for security reasons, and I was looking for something that is pretty easy to setup and upgrade when need be (Linux-Ubuntu is the prime candidate but there are more secure ones available), so again, any advice is much appreciated and I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers. (Also, I will never use a Windows based server, not a windows hater but there are many things I hate about licensing windows and setting it up and stuff. So do not suggest it.)
I'd suggest you go for a Linode (linode.com) 512 VPS for as low as $20/mo and have it set up with Ubuntu 10.4 LTS (the 32bits version). There are even disk images pre-built for common use cases (web server, mail server, etc.), so you can have everything up in a matter of minutes. HTH, -flod