I can't decide which Distro
 

You all have probably been asked this sort of question a million times, but please bear with me. I'm trying to decide between Suse Linux 9.3 Professional (GNOME) and Fedora Core 4 (GNOME). Can somebody give me an opinion or input as to which one may be faster or less likely to put up a fight when installing software or which may be more user friendly as far as the gnome desktop is concerned. Its probably a stupid question, but what the hey.

They are both pretty straight forward installs, the difference will be small. the Suse distro uses the Yast Package management system, and fedora with redHats rpms. the probably both will detect all your hardware off the bat and give you a functioning linux system in little to no effort.

I say try them both and find out for yourself which one you like better.

Nugsolot

Suse professional has the advantage that it includes quite a bit of proprietry/US patented code and drivers so it will probably put up less of a fight. For example it includes mp3 support out of the box, but Fedora requires some extra unofficial rpms for that.

Really though, they are both very similar RPM based distros but Suse has some nice config tools for newbies and some extra stuff on the dvd. Yast is a big plus for Suse - Fedora's graphical package management is dubious. They have the same engine in the end and both will probably support your hardware to the same level.

I use Fedora 4 instead of Suse 9.3 Pro because its free and totally open whereas Suse Pro isnt.

If you want Fedora with proprietary stuff and graphical package management, use Blag--it's Fedora-based, one CD, comes fully loaded, and has Synaptic Package Manager.

Well while I was setting up fedora 4 the way i wanted it, the friggen thing took a hell of a long time to update. The update thingy would hang a few times and it normaly would take me a couple of hours to get things the way I wanted and sometimes longer. Limewire is a bitch to install even though i would have jave already installed. After that, I just said f**k it and opted for GTK-gnutella.

I've also been playing with Blag lately. Pretty good, if you want to try Fedora. Synaptic is an awesome package manager.

Well I have tried heaps of distro's, and for a trouble free Linux variant,
I would highly recommend, Ubuntu. "Linux for the People". ^_^

I would, too, but not without the Ubuntu Guide.

Wait a sec.I think I tried to install BLAG at one point, but I believe it would only allow me to set up a dial up connection and not a broardband connection like with a cable modem. Tell me if I'm wrong. It was one or maybe even a couple of distros that only allowed a setup for dialup connections. Please somebody clear this up for me.

Gentoo is easier to install programs and upgrade them when you want to. Package based distributions are POS (piece of sh!t) if you want to use Linux for a long term basis without having to re-install it or messing around with upgrades. Packaged based distributions are ok for a user that wants to try Linux, but they are not ok for years of use.

The one problem with Gentoo. It is a little hard to install it. By installing Gentoo, you will understand what package based distributions do in the background. Slackware and Debian are the same as Gentoo's installation steps. I suggest picking stage 3 when installing Gentoo, because it will take a lot less time. Installing kde, xorg, and gnome took about 17 hours on a Pentium 4 2.0 GHz (Northwood core) with 256 MB of RAMBUS memory.

Any Linux distribution can setup any modem. You just need to get the required software to control it. I use a cable modem which is connected to the ethernet. Yes, I use consumer grade router.

17 hrs???? installing Arch & slack just take about 20 min. what a waste of time....

Suse is what Fedora would be if RedHat fully supported linux on the desktop. I'd go suse.

But I'd go Ubuntu these days.

With package based distributions, you will go through hell trying to upgrade even though you have several servers listed. Compiling programs is the only way to upgrade. Gentoo shines during upgrading when packaged based distributions are over cast.

How Gentoo works:
Lets say we want to install WINE. To do that, we type emerge wine (of course as root). emerge checks the ebuild file of wine and process it. The ebuild file is like the recipe to make WINE. The ebuild file contains what programs are needed to successfully make WINE. After it got the dependencies downloaded, compiled and install, it downloads, compiles, and installs WINE by doing ./configure && make depend && make && make install. By doing this WINE uses the libraries that you have installed instead of you installing them yourself like in packaged based distributions. The source is not changed by Gentoo like in other distributions, so what you get is the same program as you would downloading it from the developer of the program.

I am sure that Gentoo makes it much easier to install ATI and to set an ATI card with hardware rendering. Gentoo makes installing nVidia drivers easier than using nVidia's installer.

Moved to Linux - Distributions to reside with all the other which distribution questions.

When I started with linux a few months back fedora was the first distro I tried. Shortly after I switched to suse. YAST was the thing that sold me on suse. It reminded me of the control panel in xp (no flames please :) )
You mentioned wanting to use gnome. Suse is built to use kde as default. I think fedora still favors gnome. Maybe this will decide it for you.
As someone mentioned earlier, why not try both? Both installs are quick and painless.