As far as recommending them to someone who doesn't have much of a Unix background- yes. Avoid 'em like the plague. But, if you're familiar with Unix and don't mind learning the sysadmin side of it, and don't mind reinstalling a couple times to remedy novice snafus then, sure go for it. I've played around on Red Hat a little- some of our contractors have it installed on windows laptops, but I haven't maintained it. It's ok, it can be stable. I have seen it crash on said laptops. It is an adequate OS: very do-it-yourself, it's just not spectacular.