I installed Ubuntu 8.10 where I had installed Fedora 11 a couple of days ago. The reason is that Red Hat doesn't install possibly "encumbered" codecs for file formats which are not GPL. I had forgotten this and found that I could not play MIDI files, and I assume MP3 files, as well. Many other Linux distributions support these common formats. Even So, Fedora will let you install many music-related programs that are dependant on these file types.
So, pissed off at lawyers, Fedora and Red Hat are trying to adhere to the likings of enterprise customers who are concerned with risk of patent or copyright infringement, and Red Hat is trying to give the encumberers a black eye by carping about the restrictions as you get denial to access to the file types. I'm not playing that game which is wny I clobbered the Fedora 11 install, and will avoid using that distro.
I got Ubuntu up and added packages I like although some of the packages I want are not available; they night be in the Debian repository, but that increases the risk that they will not install here. I also have an aborted debian install. The install from the 64-bit DVD I had failed twice. It did a base install but didn't add other packages. The fact that it hung at that step with no error implies that the media was bad. Ubuntu is based on Debian as is Knoppix. I had toyed with installing an older Knoppix, but decided not to.