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?

fedora core 6 is good for what >>1 is looking for

ubuntu is good for n00bians but i know some vets that run it on their laptops since all the hardware works under ubuntu

i too started out with slack for a long time and redhat 7.2 as well but fc6 is good for a desktop setup for my sysadmins laptop

>>2 thats too long a discussion for this forum, lol google it urself