By all means I still consider myself a noob, you can never know everything Running FC5, reluctant to upgrade to FC6 just yet.. But like i've said, I'm debating whether to upgrade to FC6 or switch to unbuntu. Nope, not looked into Gentoo.
http://distrowatch.com/ Ubuntu appear to be the top linux distro atm but at the end of the day, ultimately it's up to ones preferences / taste.
What wireless card do you have? I had no trouble installing mine. I have an atheros card. I simply installed madwifi drivers - works perfectly.
With the dongle, I did have a bluetooth script that enabled you to connect to bluetooth devices. I can't get access to it right now as the power supply for my ext hdd has gone bust I'll see if I can source it on the net again.
I still have windows on this laptop (triple booted) but that's only used for GPS navigation. I've yet to find a proggy on linux that works as good as AutoRoute.