I've been using CentOS and it's been treating me pretty well.

I don't think it'd be the best choice for you though. It's primarily aimed at being a server distribution, and there are probably easier distros to work with. I just use it because it's basically RHEL and I've been on Red Hat since version 4 and it's what I'm comfortable with.

Mark Lord says great things about [K]Ubuntu and he's arguably the biggest linux geek around.