Fedora is great, and very stable for me. I don't think you'd miss much. I'm a kernel developer and most of the people I work with also use Fedora (most of the t

Fedora is great, and very stable for me. I don't think you'd miss much. I'm a kernel developer and most of the people I work with also use Fedora (most of the them work for RH), and want it to just work. Ubuntu is probably just as good. I'd recommend asking for the nicest Thinkpad you can get.