Fedora needs work yet- MP3 stuff you must do-it-all-yourself, their automated Yum installer system doesn't work well, patented software does not exist at all, etc etc etc...
For the moment and for home workstation usage you can hardly find something better than Mandrake 9.2, or wait for version 10.0 being somewhat fixed. It even has software repositories for patented/licenced software which you can grab and install automatically via the graphical URPMI installer without any effort or dependencies problems...
SuSE is not bad, but it is definitely NOT free software, so not my piece of cake...
When I said that 10.0 works I didn't mention that ALSA (now part of the 2.6.X kernel) sounds like s&%t, SCSI emulation is broken (it's not a Mandrake, but a kernel bug- already fixed on 2.6.4), VMware doesn't work (you need a copy of the 2.4.X kernel and switching/rebooting before using it) and several other annoyances...
But I have seen worse, whatever buggy 10.0 is it includes a lot of great features and even a braindead could install it and use it (...when it does install and does work, that is...)
Another good idea is getting Knoppix and after getting familiar with it (LiveCD= no fuss, no pain etc...) installing it to harddisk and having a Debian ready to go. Knoppix 3.4 should be available within the next 5-6 days, and has an impressive set of features.