There is a ton of ways to run an mc server. Personally I'd recommend installing a stable linux distro (like debian). Going with a headless install is probably the best idea since you don't really need a GUI for a remote server. After setting you can simply enable ssh and remote into it using your main computer (any terminal and the ssh command on unix systems, PuTTY on windows). After you successfully login into the server just download openjdk and the minecraft server jar, create a folder for your server along with a run bash script and execute it to run the server
#bought server for minecraft, what now?
reef nymph
Of course you can use any linux distribution you'd like. Debian is just the least likely to break when updating repositories
Technically you can use Windows too but that's a really bad idea since it contains a ton of bloat and will reduce the performance of your minecraft server
lucid falcon
@lucid falcon