OK so I attempted CentOS 5.2 as a desktop OS but it just doesn't cut it.
You have to Google till you're cross eyed to get MP3/WMV support. Then when you enable the right YUM repositories you get cross repository conflicts that can't be resolved. Fooey. I also found that my intel graphics card was Fuzzy (but less so than Fedora 10).
So back to the cutting trailing edge of Ubuntu 8.04.
It's stable, It's got bells and whistles and I can install VMWare Server 2.0 on it with no update-any-any patch.
One of these days I will get a dedicated server box and I won't be trading off enterprise features against my desire to have the latest desktop. Until then it's Ubuntu 8.04.
You can always try debian testing or debian stable if you want slower program updates.
Have you tried Mandriva?
Yes Tried Mandriva from a CD off Linux or Linux Format magazine. Didn't get very far with it because the media was partially corrupt.
In the end I'm finding the rpm distro's don't have enough in the 'official' repositories which requires adding foreign repositories which then causes issues with circular dependencies etc.