I'd say go with Mandrake. I just installed mandrake9.0 and I am very happy with it. It comes with nice packages and it is easy. Much easier than RH. I have a buddy with RH 8.0 and when he has an issue it is a bitch to fix. Fixing an issue in mandrake is a whole load easier and if you are running an nvidia display card hardware acceleration is easy. Even wine is easy.
I also just put mandrake onto my ftp server and so far no big complaints.
For beginners and advanced linux gurus mandrake seems to be very popular and I can see why...!!