It seems there is reasonably strong support for running Debian on the new 1Us. Shaihulud, gwicke, jeronim would like Debian; I remember there was also support for it from various people here on tech-l. Again, it would make system administration and maintenance considerably easier and more manageable.
The only objection that was raised to Debian on the list was that it doesn't have a stable 64-bit release, which clearly isn't an issue for the P4s. Also, since I'm told Jimbo is unfamiliar with Debian (which might be a problem during the installation), I'd like to point out that you can install Debian pretty easily from a Knoppix CD. Only a barebones install is needed - the rest can be done over ssh.
Cheers, Ivan.