My suggestion is to use Slackware. Albeit, I am a bit partial to it, but there is a good reason. Alot of the distros out there try to lure users in with a GUI and easy to use options. However, what you don't know is that something that big has problems like Windows...there are SO many processes that are running that you really don't know what process is secure and what is it. Slack on the other hand, does ONLY what you tell it to do and to secure it, you just have to comment/uncomment things in a few text files. And honestly, that does not take much work at all.

For secure servers, Slack is best because you don't lose any functionality to your GUI but you are in more control. The only scary thing is the text-based install (Lots of blue screens with white words) but they really aren't so bad, just read the prompts.

Regardless of which distro you use, there are loads of people (myself included) who love helping out newbs as they learn Linux. This site, and other sites like LinuxQuestoins.org are chock full of information to help you!

Just got Slackwhere box running as an Xwindows terminal.. worked good for that, Its great for minimalistic instlalls (in some respects, the aweful package managment system is the biggest downside).

If you have the time Gentoo is great, You will learn a hell of a lot just instlling it (make certain you follow the installation guide )

Gentoos package management is awesome, If your willing to wait for things to compile .

Debain is also great very customizable (alot more then slack, Yet I think less then gentoo) apt-get is a great package management system.

But really, Gentoo is the best hand dirtying system in the world
Easyness to install slackware prolly wins over gentoo

I have downloaded and tried to install Apache on my Linux box, and un-tar'ing the thing is as far as I can get. The documentation that came with it says that it has to be compiled, and that there is a script to compile it with it. I can't find it. Even if I did find it, how do I run it? Every thing I try to run, it asks me what I want to use to open it. How am I supposed to run any program? If I knew what I needed to open it, I wouldn't need an operating system!

Read the INSTALL that should be in the directory that you untared

You Prolly Install it as such

$./configure
$make
$sudo make install

It sounds like you are trying to compile it from the GUI (KDE or Gnome). This cannot be done very easily, to compile it you need to run the commands Paul stated from the terminal (or command prompt).

Apache is an exceedingly popular server, I would be exceedingly suprised if it wasn't already supplyed with your distrobution.

I would check out my distrabutions Package Management System, before attempting to compile from the source..

I think in suse you use Yast
gentoo you use emerge
ubuntu you use synaptic
debian apt-get

If you state what your distrabution is, someone will very likly know how to install apache on it.

Yes. It wouldn't have actually been installed on your system during the installation unless you you specifically chose to do a Server or Custom install, but the pre-compiled (ready to run) Apache package is probably included on your install disks.

I did install as a server package. I don't remember seeing Apache as an option to install when I installed it, but I will go back and look.

As for what distro I am running, Paul, I've already stated that a few times earlier. I'm running Mandrake 10.1. In fact, you replied earlier that Mandrake probably isn't a good choice for the 200 MHz server I am planning to eventually install it to. BTW, why is it not a good choice for that? Too slow a processor? I do want something reliable, and would like to correct as many problems as possible before I even get started.

The commercial version of Mandy 10.1 is a three-tiered product. The most basic package (the "Discovery" package) unfortunatley does not included Apache, but the more advanced packages (Powerpack/Powerpack+) should.
According to info on Mandrake/Mandriva's site, the download version of 10.1 should also include Apache 2.0.50.

Have a browse through your installation package again and see if you can find Apache hiding there somewhere.

I think you hit it on the head. Despite the fact that it is a Linux system and Linux uses the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture, it is a very resource intensive application. Thusly,on that kind of processor even if you had 1GB of RAM it would still hog too much resources to make it feasible.

You wouldn't install Windows Server 2003 on a 200mhz would you?