[quote=ucodegen]You may also want to consider Fedora Core 10 or 11.[/quote]

A caveat to using Fedora Core is that it is their “bleeding edge” branch. Normally that is a plus, but it’s bitten me in the ass before. General rule of thumb is to only go with Fedora Core if you are ok with stuff potentially breaking or being incompatible. If you want something stable FC is not the way to go. But if you need the latest versions of everything, FC is sweet.