You know what the easy answer is just go out and get
RedHat 9
It's easy, (Mandrake's easier, and more similar To SuSE than is RH)
you've got tons of tech support on the web, most rpms out there are designed for RH, most knew, cutting edge stuff is rpm'ed for redhat first, let alone designed for RH first.
Good hardware support..........I take that back
I've used SuSE, RH7.3----9.0, mandrake 8. They have all been great for me asfar as hardware goes.
goto
linuxiso.orglook around, see what there is to see, and click on the distro site links, they best describe themselves. They will say weather they are designed for ease of use or to be used as a router on an old 386.