which lunix distro?

I've used Slackware since 1994 but I'm looking for something that isn't such a pain in the ass.  I've learned everything I need to learn from Slackware's pain-in-the-assness, so I want to take it easy and use a more user-friendly distribution.

Is Ubuntu any good?  Fedora?  What about Mandrake?  Gentoo?

>>10
RPMs suck majorly.

>>12
Applications where performance is important, like Azureus, need to be written in C. Not C++, C. As in, "for men". And distributed in binary form (besides the source repository), GNU source fags need to GTFO. Applications where performance is not important, like an email client, should be written in a higher level language for your own sake.