A quick follow-up here before work...maybe ClearOS will end up being the best choice after all. I'll give it a try after work.

It seems that openSUSE can't find my boot partition after a reboot and Fedora doesn't like my nvidia card at all...it installs but hangs on boot.

So the community might be the best; I need a file server first and a GUI second. If I get that working after all and have future questions I'll just post as a new 7.x thread since Dave's looking for feedback anyway.

Thanks