Been many moons since I played with *nix, but last time it was to give Ubuntu a try, and I liked what I played with. Before that, I used to like Mandrake (before it went more commercialized like RedHat). Of all the currently popular distro's I would suggest Ubuntu, for stability, compatibility, and ease of transition.
I love the idea of sudo. I had often wished for a command to temporarily grant su privledges for just a command or two. I may have to find my VMware and play around again.
PS: Gnome FTW
