jtara - 4:42 pm on May 31, 2006 (gmt 0)

You didn't state your intended use. Desktop? Web server? Other?

Fedora Core is certainly the most ubiquitous. I give it a lot of points just for that. There's no lack of available information, books, etc. I run Fedora Core. The whirlwind pace of updates and upgrades might not be your cup of tea, though. It also shares the problem of all (U.S.-based at least) public releases that it omits anything with restricted licensing terms (a lot of multimedia software) so you have to download these programs seperately. Because of the ubiquity of Fedora Core, third party support is excellent - this is the first platform most vendors will support.

If you are interered in setting up a web server environment (test server, development server, etc.) CentOS would be a good choice. CentOS is a free distribution based on the Redhat Enterprise source. It is more stable (and thus less up to date, though) than Fedora Core. One advantage is that you would have an environment identical or nearly identical to many web hosting services.

I hear a lot of good things about Ubuntu (and Kbuntu) for desktop systems. Haven't tried it myself, though. It's on a much slower release schedule than Fedora Core.