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 "Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join. The Fedora Project is out front for you, leading the advancement of free, open software and content." from the official Fedora Project website. Fedora is one of our favorite distros; in fact, we use it to host this website!
Since Fedora 7, Fedora has been released with a Live CD/DVD. Now, like a lot of other popular distributions (such as Ubuntu), you can try out Fedora without actually installing it to disk. I have found that the Live CD takes a lot longer to boot up with Fedora than some of the lighter distros such as Ubuntu. Most Live CDs have taken 15 to 30 seconds to boot up on my PC, and since I have what I consider a fast machine, and this distro takes closer to 1 1/2 to 2 minutes to boot, for those of you with slower machines, you may want to go for the traditional installer over the Live CD, or you might be waiting quite a long time to see the pretty Fedora desktop. 
Once you start the installer, Fedora will ask you the typical questions about how to partition the disk, how much this or that, it's easier to just follow the defaults unless you're a real tinkerer like I am. Fedora does provide a lot of freedom for installing additional software during the operating system install, which can save you bucket loads of time after everything's finished. I usually spend the good part of an hour picking out all the little pieces of software I would like to install (and occasionally deselcting some software that I would have no use for). This is especially nice compared to some distros like Ubuntu that don't provide any choice during the install. 
They've done a lot to pretty up Fedora. Red Hat was the first distro I ever used, and I quickly grew fond of Fedora. It still brings a tear of joy to my eyes to see it (so nostaligic). However, there are a few downsides to the distro. It's not as popular as distributions like Ubuntu, which means your community is a lot smaller. If you run into those rare problems that are specific to Fedora, you might run into more difficulty finding someone out there with the solution. Also, Fedora is extremely anti-proprietary software, which means you're not going to get any of DVD codecs or Flash Player automatically installed, and you're not going to find them in the add/remove applications GUI either. You'll have to take the time to add some repositories yourself that contain these apps, or start installing RPMs manually. It's not so bad really; there's not that often you need proprietary software, but it can make a mountain out of a mole hill when you're first setting up your system. 
Where does Fedora shine? The system admin area. Fedora has a great firewall, and it comes with SELinux, which will lock down your system and keep your users from mucking it up. It's got great GUIs for working with samba, your firewall, your services, etc. Fedora is the next generation Red Hat Enterprise server, the test bed for Red Hat applications, and it really shows. If you're a system admin, host a web site, perform lots of scripting or other tasks, you're going to have a blast with Fedora. If you're every day Joe user and you don't like to think about how your system works or what it's doing, maybe Fedora isn't for you.
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Linux Distros 
