Your opinions please... which distro for me?

[Brook]

Sorry guys, I bet you get sick of hearing this question all the time, but I hope some of you will help me out a little.

I am looking for a Linux Distro which would suit my needs, mainly, I want to achieve two things:

Install a distro that will help me further understand and 'learn' how things are done with CentOS (which I believe is a clone of Red Hat). CentOS is used on a dedicated server I rent, so it would be handy to use a distro that is similar when it comes to command line/inner workings etc

But at the same time, I'd like a distro that, maybe, will be able to replace windows as my day to day OS at home. So should have plenty of bells and whistles and not make me feel like I am using an 'inferior' OS.

My thinking is if I get a windows replacement for home, it will force me to learn Linux for my decated server's purposes.

It will be installed on a new PC using an intel C2D e6420 processor.

From reading websites, I am leaning towards Fedora Core (but is the lack of community support an issue?). CentOS would be an ideal choice, but if it's not going to be a good windows replacement, I just won't use it, which will defeat the object.

Ubuntu seems to be a very popular choice, but I don't know how much it would actually help me with understanding CentOS. Same goes for Debian.

The other alternative is to use a Distro which is the _best_ for web serving (Debian? FreeBSD? Other?) and then perhaps ditching the CentOS server I have at present, and going with a new server using the same Distro (it will have Cpanel installed anyway).

Hope some of you can help!

Cheers.

[Juan Pablo]

The best option for you is Fedora, I don't know where you read it lacks community support, it has some nice forums and this is a community and you can get Fedora support here. It lacks commercial support in contrast with RHEL

[budman7]

It looks to me as if you have already answered your own question.
Centos is a clone of Redhat, Fedora is testing ground for Redhat while being made for personal use.

You should check out Distrowatch top 10
And do a bit of experimenting till you find out what works best for you.
And as we do with all of these "which distro" threads, Locked.