I would suggest Octopress/Jekyll framework to serve static web pages from a VPS such as DigitalOcean/linode. You may as well use Github Pages to host your web pages if that meets your needs.
Yes, I am aware of that. I am talking about things just working out of the box. It depends on which linux distro you use. I am not talking about just installing linux here.
There are choices - Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse etc. and each distribution differs in user interface and the hardware support (graphic cards/wifi/bluetooth etc.). So far, Ubuntu seems to have a slight upper hand on hardware compatibility.
Incorrect title for the post. Many of the tools mentioned are very commonly used. Also, except nice screenshots, this article is just a listing of tools with very little useful info to go with them.
This will meet many of your needs listed.