I've used mainly Debian and Mandriva in the past, with a recent short stint in Slackware that I abandoned due to a hardware problem after installing. I'm not exactly a linux newb anymore, but haven't been out of that category for long :P Anyway, I was looking at distros and trying to decide if I wanted to go back to Mandriva or Debian, or try a whole new one.

That said, here's my questions:
1. What sort of user is Fedora geared towards - beginner (like Mandriva is), intermediate, or advanced (Debian/Slackware), or somewhere in the middle?

2. How is hardware compatibility? Everything in Mandriva works out of the box for me. Specifically wondering about graphics - I use Crossover Games and a fairly good graphics card, wanting to make sure that Fedora's 'free only' mentality won't cause me problems in that area

3. Does Fedora try to do everything for you like Mandriva, or does it only do the basic stuff? or is nothing at all automatically configured?

4. And finally, how popular is Fedora versus Debian or Mandriva? Is the average user (out of the whole) a kid who couldn't install an RPM without help (like most Ubuntu users I've met), or Fedora's users mostly people who are at least somewhat proficient in basic or intermediate Linux operation?

Thanks for the input!

Fedora is unquestionably one of the top Linux distros, I believe it is ranked #2 in popularity on Distrowatch (behind only Ubuntu). I do not believe in the concept of "beginner" vs "advanced" distros, but if I did, I would probably rank Fedora as a good compromise between the two extremes. As you may know, Fedora development flows into the Red Hat project, so it is certainly advanced enough for the geekiest geek, but on the other hand, it uses Gnome by default (though there are KDE, LXDE, etc. "spins" available), which I find to be a very user-friendly desktop environment.

You may be interested in the rpmfusion.org repository. This is where you'll find a lot of the multimedia and other "non free" stuff that Fedora does not ship.

Sorry but I do not have a lot of experience with graphics card stuff (my computer uses Intel integrated graphics that don't require additional drivers). Hopefully another user can give you advice on that.

My only other comment on Fedora is that it's a "bleeding-edge" distro. It's a good choice if you want the latest and greatest showcase of Linux software. Their support period is very short (only 13 months) and it is assumed you will stay current with the release upgrades every 6 months (or else you'll quickly get left behind). (There is no "Fedora Stable" or "Fedora LTS" branch since Red Hat Enterprise Linux fills that niche already.) I don't consider this a positive or a negative necessarily, just something to keep in mind to decide if it's right for you.

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Anyone who looks forward to updating every six months.
It's going to depend on your graphics hardware
I'd say more like Mandriva than Slackware, but if you want to configure things yourself, you certainly can.
Define your measure of popularity. Server installs - I'm sure Debian is far and away more popular than Fedora. Among newbies - I really have no idea. Among Aspire One users -
The Ubuntu forum has more posts than all other distro-specific forums combined; and the Linux version of the Aspire One came with Linpus Lite, not Ubuntu.
As for level of Linux sophistication, my perception is that the average Ubuntu user is less sophisticated than the average Fedora user. Fedora is definitely bleeding edge; Ubuntu definitely more restrained, and I'd put Mandriva behind Ubuntu, but not by all that much. As for Debian, it spans the spectrum, but I've never tried running Debian Sid to see how it compares to Fedora Rawhide.

It's certainly worth giving Fedora a shot. Download a live cd, install it, and see if it works for you. If it does, fine. If not, no big deal, you can go on and try another distro.

as a long time user of fedora 4 to 11 ( i changed to Arch)
Fedora can be good , with qualifiers
1) it is a R&D distro so keep in mind that not everything will work all the time
1a) bugs -- there can be a bunch
1b) updates - they can and will fubar an install on occasion ,but mostly they would only break something. It is rare ,but happens.

2 ) a new version every 6 months . This is good OR bad it depends on how you look at it .
2a)On a server- VERY BAD
2b)home system - very new Linux person - not so good
2c)home system - very experienced user - good or bad
2d)Good IF YOU LIKE to fix things as they break , BAD if you want it "to just work "

I put the target user as " a person who LIKES to tinker and fix things "

a good example of this is gcc in fedora .
it has always been and will be THE NEWEST version .
this caused a bunch of problems for new users
the changes in gcc 4.1 to 4.3 then 4.4 ,now 4.5 means that a BUNCH of source code needed and STILL needs to be updated in order to build in gcc4.5

this is very hard for the VERY new linux user who may have never seen source code to fix.

1. somewhere in the middle to the limit. I would consider Slackware, Gentoo, LFS, and Arch (to lesser extent) for advanced users.

2. For me works great on my hardware. Had to install kmod-nvidia for my mid-range card (the nouveau driver sucks). The fedora forum is very useful.

3. It has alot of GUI's for config. Has 'yum' to easily install software, something like 16,000 packages.

4. According to distrowatch, it's more popular than Mandriva and Debian; has been #2 for a long time after ubuntu. Mandriva is another good RPM-based distro for desktop use.


*if you want something more stable (ie for a server) then you should go with CentOS (the current is based on Fedora Core 6, a new one due out soon based on I think Fedora 11).
Won't have to reinstall every 6 mos. (like Debian stable).

RHEL/CentOS 6 is based on Fedora 12, and due out at the end of the year. 5 years of hardware support and possibly new things plus 2 years of bugfixes until EOL.