Well, I downloaded Fedora Core 4 a couple days ago, and it seems to have addressed most of my gripes above. For an OS, I'm reasonably happy; for linux, I'm ecstatic. It's the best linux distro I've used yet. Except for three issues, for which I've recorded the solutions.
1) Installation would engimatically freeze when it was time to change disks. Click the "Next" button, and the graphic depresses, then everything stops. After about the fifth or tenth time installing, I decided to reburn the CDs at 8x. The very next time was *perfect*. Besides the CDs issue, though, installation was easy and straightforward. I just wish they'd program the installer such that a CD failure would be indicated by an error message.
2) Every other distro on the planet includes mp3 support, and somehow they haven't been sued yet. Drop the ideological crap, and include the decoders, goddamnit. Also, have xmms available on installation; it's the most popular player, by far. Solution? In console, "yum install xmms". Then go to freshrpms and download the XMMS MP3 plugin.
Linux will *NEVER* be ready for the desktop, so long as users have to go on an easter egg hunt to establish basic functionality.
3) The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card is a relatively common sound card. But it doesn't quite work out of the box with FC4 (or previous editions, apparently). When the system autodetects your card as a CS46xx and plays the test sound the first time, lie and say you heard it. I mean, it really is a cs4630, but the settings aren't right. When you boot in, open a terminal and start alsamixer, then enable the external amp and boost DAC to max. You could also use the kde/gnome sound mixer. I struggled quite a bit with making the soundcard work, until I figured the secret out.