[ale] Distro question...

[Jay Finch]

Hey everyone,

Let me just say up front that I don't want to start a "Distro War" - but I
would like some feedback before I make a lasting decision.

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A little Background:
I have a server that's hosting about 60-80 domains, and handling all of
their E-mail, Web and Database access.  About 6 months ago, my machine
began to exhibit signs of slowness & lag.  Based upon the increasing
amount of Spam and such, I've finally nailed down the slow reaction times
to the E-mail pre-processing I'm doing, and have decided to split the
Mailserver from the main Web/DB server.  (This is to improve the average
Web Users experience when accessing any of the sites I'm hosting.)

That said, I'm currently running RedHat 9 on the main box (with yum
getting patches from http://www.fedoralegacy.org), and am wondering:
Should I stick with Redhat or go with another Distro?  (And if Redhat,
should I go with FC3, or go with an EL version?)

I'm running Qmail, with Vpopmail & Qmailadmin on the box, and want to keep
those tools.  I'm also running Qmailscanner & ClamAV installed as per
http://www.qmailrocks.org

I'm pretty familiar with RPM, but not so much with any of the other
package managers.  I'd like to keep things installed using Packages as to
keep my upgrade/update path fairly easy.

This new machine will be exclusively a Mailserver - No web, limited DB (as
required by Vpopmail), but no other extraneous processes.  I will have
OpenSSH installed on it so I can remote admin into the box and maintain
it.  There will be no user accounts on the machine other than the personal
account I will create for administration using sudo.

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Based upon these specifications & needs, is there another distro which
would work better?  I'd prefer to stick with Linux, as it's the *nix I'm
most familiar with.  (I'm not adverse to learning a *BSD, but don't want
to do it as an exercise in configuring & setting up my new Mailserver.) 
The Distro's I'm familiar with are Redhat (pre-Fedora/EL), Slackware &
SuSE.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Jay