Im considering upgrading my home server, which is currently running Mandrake 10.1. I upgraded the laptop a few months back, which was also running 10.1. I chose Ubuntu after falling out with the Madriva site, which did not seem to offer a free download. So what would anyone recommend? Its going to be used as a server, with samba, apache, mysql and SSH, ftp and vncservers all running also. Im leaning towards Fedora or slackware at the moment, mandriva have been dropped, and ubuntu seem to be too much of a desktop OS, the install doesnt offer enough customisation options for my liking. So, whats everyone running and what would you recommend?

Running Fedora and I recommend Fedora.

I've had a good experience with slackware. The package management is relatively stable compared to others, which means it's not going to b0rk your system if you do something wrong (or if it just decides to break *looks at ubuntu*).

I would recommend either Debian Stable or Slackware. Both are stable and reliable with relatively conservative (and thus secure) defaults and timely security updates. Neither forces you to install anything you don't want. Debian's package managment is much more advanced but Slackware may be a better choice if you don't want any of the automation in the way and plan to compile your server software from source by hand anyway. That is not to say that debian isn't customizable though.

Also consider that slackware is generally updated much more often than debian (but not with a strict schedule as some of the more buggy distros) but debian has a backports project that repackages new versions of important software for the stable version.

IMHO Fedora, SuSE and even Ubuntu get too little testing and are too volatile to be good choices for a server. Look at CentOS instead if you would like something RedHat-based.