Specifically, why would one choose Fedora vs Debian vs SuSe? These seem to be the most popular distros. I currently run an old version of Redhat and I am looking into upgrading. What are the advantages of using one over the other.

I mainly use my box to store data on as a back up, so I network with my machine running XP home. I create and record music, so I like to keep a live backup of recent files in case something happens with my main PC. I eventually want to develop a scrip that would automatically pull new files to the Linux Box.

I also ssh into my machine from work to retreive files I made need. Lastly, I plan on hosting one small (and low bandwidth consuming) web site. Maybe in the future I will use it more as my "desktop" PC, but for now the only software suite I really use on it is OpenOffice once in a while (e.g. when I need to convert a word doc to pdf).

Which distro would you suggest for me?

If you're using Red Hat, I'd suggest you upgrade to Fedora or Blag. Red Hat no longer supports Red Hat as a regular desktop distro. Fedora is where desktop users should go, and Blag is Fedora-based.

Why do people in general pick certain distros? I think it all comes down to hardware recognition. One person will say, "SuSE picked up all my hardware when all the other distros couldn't." Another will say, "Ubuntu has the best hardware detection." And yet another will say, "PCLinuxOS had everything ready to go out of the box!" It all depends what computer you have, I say.

For me, Ubuntu worked, but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. Whatever works with your hardware, use it. You can always change the desktop, the applications, even the packaging system!

Oh, if you look at the last LQ members choice award, a lot of people here use Slackware. I agree that auto hardware detection is big. To me, Slackware allows me to install tricky hardware like linmodems and wireless cards much easier than Fedora and others. In Mepis, Ubuntu, or PCLinuxOS, it is very painful to make it support something it does not by default.