Some comments about Fedora 17 and Arduino.
It works great! It's not perfect.. I haven't seen a perfect program in 45 years of computers... (and I think it's not programmers' fault, it's salesmen forcing programmers to add yet another "feature" to a good working program)
Things not perfect (yet):
1 - Some tutorials say how to add libraries (my last ones were TimeOne and SimpleTimer). In Fedora 17 , Arduino libraries are at
/usr/share/arduino/libraries
2 - Mi original Arduino Uno R1 connects thru USB with no problem. But my home made Arduino-in-a-breadboard does not. Probable cause: Some bad connection... So it's not Arduino's or Fedora's fault... 
As for C/C++ limitations, you cannot have the same language with an Intel I7, 4 GB of RAM, 1 TB hard disk, super-duper 21-in color monitor and on the other side, an ATmega328, 32K RAM, no hard disk and no monitor, just a few LEDs... That "limitations" are a plus if you want to fly an Arducopter (Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.)...