hi,
in my opinion you should stick with a clean ubuntu installation. i have tried SuSe, debian and other distros as well but i always returned to ubuntu.it is the easiest way to get your job done. fedora gives me "the Windows" impression as far as GUI goes, and if you decided to ditch Windows than ubuntu should be your choice. you can still try other distros on a virtual machine, this way you don't mess up your system!!!