Which Linux for me?

[supraway]

Ok, I've decided to free up about 6 gigs on my hard drive to dual boot Win2k/Linux. As a few of you know, I have been running Redhat Linux 7.0 for a while now on a Duron system. With that, I feel too restricted because of no sound, slower hard drive, small monitor, and the computer sits in an unfomfortable place -- yeah yeah, I know.

The reason for doing this is mainly to learn about Linux a little more in detail, and if we ever need a server in a rush, I could bring up Linux if needed.

I'm going to use Partition Magic or something to repartition my hard drive with a smaller chunk, then install Linux there.

The pieces of hardware I would like to work are:
SB Live! Value, Promise Fastrak 100 TX2 RAID card, Pioneer 16X DVD drive (what do I need to play DVD?).

I would do Redhat 7.2, but I was thinking of trying something else to "play the field". I am really looking for something STABLE, compatable with this hardware, something with lots of programs such as IRC and ICQ clients, mp3 player, something FAST, something that can suit me (semi-newbie) and adapt to my growth, and also a distro that also comes with the latest versions of KDE and Gnome.

What is your opinion for a good distro? I am very experienced in computers and all versions of MS Windows and DOS, but am limited in Linux.

[PolyPill]

Well I like using the unstable version of
Debian, which is the very very very latest of everything, but I don't suggest this for anyone that doesn't know linux very well.

If you've read any other posts you'll notice other people have problems with thier hardware raid, so that might not work. Also I'm not sure of the quality of dvd in linux, I don't have a dvd drive so I'm not sure. I'm know it's possible, but how good it is I couldn't tell you.

Your best bet is probably redhat 7.2, it's the latest easy distro, which means it has the newest stuff.