I've been in and out of Linux for a while know, that last installation I used was SuSe, not happy.... the bast I've used was Red Hat 9. I need something to work with Apache and MySQL AND Oracle... of course, it has to be free. I tried this choose that ALWAYS suggest Mandriva, and in an "Also Suggest" list was Fedora. I always liked Red Hat, so, but I had problems with Core 2 and 3. What is the best suggestion here...
Mandriva is not exactly free. All the good stuff about Mandriva is for those who join the Mandriva Club. So its $60+ per year. If I were you I would check out Ubuntu and Debian, as they are free as free beer.