OT Advice for server reinstalation

[Mike Jakubik]

> Hi There!
>
> My old RedHat 7 on server is comming to end of life, as some things are
> not working correctly (but vital services like mail server
> and MS are still runing OK) so I am preparing for clean neew OS install
> on same (old) hardware.
>
> HW is pretty old, it is PIII900 with 256MB RAM, SCSI HDDs on Mylex
> AcceleRAID 170 PCI RAID Controller (one RAID0 array)
> (Yes, I know that 256MB is low, but it realy was enough in our
> enviroment, swaping occured only in rare occasions.) I can't get new
> HW, have to use this one.
>
> I am asking for advice which Linux distribution and products to use.
>
> Distribution have to be completely free (fully downloadable from
> internet),
>   

FreeBSD, bsd license. But stick with what you know best, as that will 
always be the best solution for you. This is just my recommendation.
> must be rpm compatible (or other packaging system, but rpm is
> preffered),
> must support my old HW (with RAID card),
>   

FreeBSD has ports that will have all the software you need, and your HW 
should be supported just fine.
> must be "admin friendly" as I am not "big linux guru".
>   

Well, this is relative.
> Main Services which will be run on server (which are running also now)
> Sendmail
> POP3/IMAP (what to use here? Dovecot? Courrier? Something else?)
>   

Dovecot and Courier are probably your best choices.
> Apache
> MailScanner 
> SpamAssassin
> MailWatch
> Samba
> WebMin
> MySQL
> FireBird
>
> DHCP, DNS and firewall are running on other servers 
>
> I am thinking of Fedora Core 4 distribution. But I am open for other
> suggestion from more knowlegeable people here.
>
> Thanks in advance for suggestions.
>   

FreeBSD doesn't install much of the bloat that Linux does by default, so 
it should be well suited for your older hardware. If you go with Linux, 
make sure you install only what you need, and disable unused services 
such as nfs, rpc, etc...