Yeah, my personal advice: Use Debian.
If you really want Red Hat, I'm not sure which version to pick, but I
would strongly consider the latest "Enterprise Edition" version,
either an official blessed (and expensive) copy from Red Hat, or one
of the copies built from the source rpm's and with the RH logos
removed. (Other than the cost, I don't really have any idea what the
differnces are between the Red Hat Enterprise AS/ES/WS flavors.)