I'd recommend Ubuntu too - especially if most of your work is "vanilla" - e.g. Apache, MySQL, etc. The assistance around this is both high quality and accessibl

I'd recommend Ubuntu too - especially if most of your work is "vanilla" - e.g. Apache, MySQL, etc. The assistance around this is both high quality and accessible (not that it's not with Debian... I just find it better for Ubuntu). Once you get running you might consider a switch to Debian, but I've never reached that point.