Samba Server on Centos ... or Ubuntu ... or Some Other Distro

[George]

I have a friend who wants to move his co's (windows type) files from a dated
Novel server to a Linux box using Samba.

I can load Centos or UBUNTU in the box.  I like Debian based distros for
stability and was wondering if Centos (RH) has an advantage over a Debian
distro given the nature of this being a 100% server system.

Also, what better distros might there be over UBUNTU (I have UBUNTU 5.1)?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

TIA

George

"Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it himself" ...
Weller's Law