Okay, here's where I am...
The only disto that I got to install out of the 12 - 14 i tried is Fedora 11 (12's LiveCD never even loaded for me, i figure I'll just upgrade once I got everything in working order)...
So I have Fedora 11 installed...
Once again thank you to everyone who offered their help to me...(i look forward to everyones input on my next thread/post on how to get my Realtek NIC and wifi card up and running