Best distrubution for Linux VPS?

If you're set on having the ultimate flexibility that a VPS gives you, then ignore what I'm about to say. But if the main concerns with a VPS setup tend to be concerns like ease of security and package management, are you sure you want to be the sysadmin? Instead of considering the OS, you might want to consider a hosting service that gives you a lot of latitude in what you build, install, and run -- http://www.webfaction.com/ is one such host that supports WSGI, so you'd be good to go with your django apps.

If you don't mind the learning curve of another *nix, OpenBSD would be you absolute best bet for security (as well network performance). BSDs can also handle many Linux binaries via ports, but there is a lot to take in before making the decision as it is a different platform/kernel. If you have a spare computer or virtual, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. There's also FreeBSD which has a decent software library and community support. As far as startup scripts, http://bsdwiki.reedmedia.net/wiki/Configure_a_service_to_start_at_boot_time.html In some ways that can be a good thing as it's a simpler layout. In some ways that can be a bad thing as it's a simpler layout. ymmv.

I started being a Linux user with Debian (Sarge?) where I feel in love with the package management. I now run Ubuntu and Debian. The Ubuntu community is huge, though a lot of the knowledge there is just as applicable to Debian. I tinkered with BSD (the security is what always kept me interested), but never felt the need to move from my deb-based distros to any BSD flavor.

I'm with Blake, when in doubt on security issues, I don't try to be an expert. My default for anything security related is to go with the most common, high profile, active community package available, and right now that seems to be Ubuntu. When I first used a VPS I used Slicehost and it had a lot of very comprehensive articles on how to lock down an Ubuntu slice. There's info all over the web on how to do this, so that's the way I'd go.

Thanks for your answers! At the moment I do want a Linux distro, I want to spend as less time sysadminning as possible and learning a new OS is not high on my priority list for now. I have actually looked into WebFaction, that seems ideal to me but I think that the 240MB max user-memory may not be enough. I also looked into other managed solutions (http://kencochrane.net/blog/2011/06/django-hosting-roundup-who-wins/) but they were either too complicated, too expensive, or still in beta so I decided to stick with the VPS for now.

As far as your main platform I'd then have to 'nth those recommending Ubuntu. It's our distro of choice where I work too, as a lot of thought has been put into it by its maintainers to make it one of the easiest linux distros to manage out there. Normally we'll stick with the LTS versions unless there's a pressing need to go bleeding edge. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/download is the most current stable version available at the moment. The next will be 12.04.

I've run all 3 of your proposed OSes before (though in different roles, so take my advice with a pinch of salt). CentOS - I don't really like them. I used to run a CentOS-powered web hosting server. It wasn't exactly a nightmare, but updates weren't as frequent as I'd have liked, especially security updates. They seem to lag Red Hat by quite a fair bit, so you might be running a out-of-date distribution. The last time I ran a RPM-based distro like CentOS was 4 years ago, so things may have changed since then, but I will always remember the dependency-hell that I went through. So all in all, not too fond of CentOS... Ubuntu - relatively easy to set up, and because of its popularity, it has a huge user-base (and therefore, support). But I don't like what Ubuntu stands for (in terms of contributing back to the main code base), but that's philosophical rather than technical. I've got no problems with them technically - deb-based distributions are able to handle dependencies much more gracefully, I feel. If you're going to use Ubuntu, stick with their LTS (long-term support) releases, which have a longer release cycle and support cycle, meaning that you aren't forced to upgrade to the latest and greatest each time. Debian - my all-round favourite OS. I use this for nearly everything - file server, hosting server, laptop etc. I like that it is deb-based, and that I have a choice of a rolling distribution, or a fixed distribution. The difference is that with a rolling distribution, I get updates forever (I just pick the 'branch' that I want, e.g. stable, testing or unstable). With the latter, I pick the distribution (Debian 5 or 6) and run with it until it's time to upgrade. Depending on how you want to set things up you might pick different methods (by the way, although your VPS provider says Debian 5 or 6, that refers to the install, but after installation you can choose whether you want a rolling distribution or a fixed distribution by changing the sources). HTH.

I run a few VPS with django apps (uwsgi/nginx/postgres/redis). All off Ubuntu. My advice... it doesn't really matter what you use. Script it all. Even better take a little bit of time (eg. a week and http://www.vagrantup.com) and learn Chef or Puppet with Fabric. I can deploy in one command to a brand new box. Fabric to throw up the chef-solo script and then it runs chef. It's really amazing.

Thanks again! The consensus seems to be that either Debian or Ubuntu is the way to go. I decided to try Debian for a few days and then see if I like it better than Ubuntu. Will be moving away from CentOS in any case. Any links to good documentation or even book recommendations are welcome, should anyone still read this. I have the impression that years ago when I installed my first VPS it was a lot easier to find good documentation. Now information often seems to be buried between forum and blog posts of varying quality.