Jumping ship to Linux

So the time has come for me to install Linux on my Mac. I'm wondering which distro to go with. I have a iMac G3 PPC32 (rev. C 333mhz).

Debian, Gentoo, Yellow Dog Linux, SuSe, Mandrakelinux, Fedora, ROCK Linux, CRUX?

I'm leaning towards Gentoo and YDL. I will use it primarily for homework, internet and programming (Java and C++).