I installed Fedora but it took like forever to make it work right with the graphics drivers and am scared it'll be the same way with Suse.

I really like Fedora but I want to try XGL. I am curious what are some big differences between Fedora and Suse and how I can install the most current Nvidia drivers once I install Suse if it doesn't come prepackaged with them.

xgl works on fc5 too... plenty of articles around on setting it up.

Even though I like SUSE a lot, I agree with acid_kewpie that you should stick with the distro you know (or are learning). As a side comment to anyone else viewing this thread, updating the Nvidia drivers in SUSE 10.0 was a snap using YOU (YaST Online Update). The new version of SUSE (10.1) uses a different tool that may not work as well.

FC, Suse, Ubuntu are all very similar distros. Just different package managers, but similar concept.

Suse is my fav, but if I had to give it up, I'd go to FC.

XGL should work on all 3. Suse 10.1 w/ XGL worked on my laptop w/ an ATI card and KDE but was very slow.

I'd recommend suse if you're interested. I've not used redhat since v7 so I can't compare them, but I'll tell you that Nvidia drivers are no problem, and really just about everything worked for me right out of the box.

try slackware

I setup XGL and cannot say I enjoyed the experience. All I saw was a bunch of eye-candy. It did not help me in one single way. If anything it made me less productive since in order to make windows dance when I move them, the windows blur both while moving and a few milliseconds afterwards (while the effect completes), making the window text unviewable for a longer period of time than necessary.

I love SuSE much more than Fedora and found it to be very well polished in most respects, but XGL is definitely not a selling point. Maybe it's just this release. Did anyone have a great experience with XGL? Did it accelerate any useful functions? I'm just curious. Maybe I missed something.

if you ask me I'd say if you're using it for personal issues then you'd better try a small distro
but if you're using it for more serious issues then try a major distro and stick to it coz you'll end up jumping from one distro to another for your whole life without feeling that much of change
I persoanlly use SuSE 10 for programming but at home I use MEPIS and SuSE but mostly MEPIS which is easy to install and easy to manage
finally it's your call !!!!

Why? what's the point of just saying that? you need to back any viewpoints up, and favouritism is just irrelevant.