What is the best Linux distro for a php web server? [closed]

We are planning to upgrade our hardware and at the same time we plan to reinstall all our web server from a fresh OS. Currently our web server is running on CentOS 4.7 on a dedicated server. We are using Apache, Mysql, PHP, SVN, FTP and all the needed tools for a web server managed through SSH.

We plan to use a cloud server for the new web server. I don't know which Linux distro to take for this new server. Should I stay with Centos and just take the latest release 5.4 or should I switch to something else like a Debian base distro (Ubuntu Server)?

The thing that I didn't like with CentOS was the none availability of the latest version of PHP and Apache on Yum. This make it harder to keep our webserver updated with the latest technologies...

Thanks for your help!

You can run CentOS with all the latest versions of most software thanks to the excellent remi's repos.

I've recently switched all my machines to Ubuntu from a mixture of CentOS and Solaris. The repositories are kept up-to-date with security fixes, and there's a new OS release every 6 months (or long-term supported (LTS) releases every 2 years if you need stability.)

Having said that, I always compile user-facing software for this very reason, to ensure it's up-to-date.

CentOS is not the bleeding edge, but you get rock solid stabillity in return. It also has the advantage that it is basically Redhat Enterprise Linux, so any corporate software (like the ePages webstore) said to run on rhel, will run on the corresponding CentOS version.

Still, for the services you want to support, just about any bigger linux distro will do. For headless I personally like the Debian distro's. I found it easy to get into when I was just starting out.

If you are familiar with CentOS, you probably should stick with CentOS. It will do a fine job. My personal preference is more towards Debian/Ubuntu but has but that has more to do with my familiarity with them, then the technical capabilities.

We are really happy with Ubuntu. The mix of the powerful Debian core with not so terribly outdated package version is a great combination.