I also have a Dell Inspiron 6000. I installed
Ubuntu 6.06 last weekend on my internal HD (I partitioned it so that I could have a dual-boot with XP Pro and Ubuntu). To my amazement nearly everything worked "out of the box" including the scrolling on the touchpad and even the wireless. I have an Intel PRO 2915 ABG card. The
NetworkManager app makes it really easy to configure wireless connections. Ubuntu's Live CD allows you to play around with it for a bit, and then install right from there. The installer probably has the best GUI installer for any Linux distribution that I've seen. It only asks a couple of simple questions and then pretty much does everything on its own, including the set up of the GRUB boot loader. The part I like the most is that only one single CD is ever needed.
I don't know anything about Fedora, but I do know that Ubuntu truely lives up to its claim of being "linux for human beings" in its latest 6.06 "Dapper Drake" release (June 1).