[ale] Distro Recommendation

[aaron]

I have a friend (and former business partner) who now works as a programmer  
for Scientific Atlanta. Sour grapes from BSD hackers not withstanding, it 
seems that S.A. is now migrating to Linux as the OS for all of their embedded 
set top cable boxes and supporting media server products. [Yeah!]

So my friend called today  looking for a Linux distro recommendation for his 
personal and home systems.  His development team now uses a lot of Red Hat 
for test systems, servers and developer desktops, so I suggested Fedora Core, 
as one would think that should be the most similar and "compatible" with the 
commercial Red Hat distro offerings.

Did I put him on the right track? Are there distros that will integrate with 
Red Hat as well or better?

Will pass on any wisdom shared...

peace
aaron