Need Distro Recommendation

[Jlawrence tacenergy com]

Hello List,

Being somewhat of a Linux newbie, I have always defaulted to Red Hat since
it was the easiest to install and get up and running.  Now that I have a
*little* experience under my belt, I would like to try something different.
I am somewhat miffed about RH 8.0 and how it customizes Gnome for you, so I
would like to get some people's recommendation for a distribution that meets
these requirements:

1.  Plays well with laptops.  This will be going on my Dell Inspiron 2650.
Except for the Nvidia video chipset, everything "just works."  I can get the
video working just fine.  Because I am inexperienced with hardware, I need a
distro that will auto-detect these sorts of things.
2.  Has a current (>2.0) version and stock install of Gnome.  This is the
main reason that I want to try something different - I want a stock install
of Gnome that hasn't been jacked with in some way.

So, any suggestions?

Josh Lawrence