i think redhat 8.0 is a good choice for all users ,who wish to have compatibility with eda tools and also with new hardware.although cadence ic 5.0141 can be installed on fedora core 2 ,u may not be able to run some other tools like magma or synopsys etc.by the way i have tested cadence ic on rh 8.0 and fedora core 2.it runs on both platforms without any problems.but iam able to run wavescan only in rh 8.0 and was not able to do the same in fedora core 2.
regards
amarnath