A brief history of distros:
Originally Linux did not come in distribution format. You got a live CD containing the kernel and compiler and compiled Linux from scratch. Many were frusturated with this impractical scheme and the first distributions were born. The first popular distribution of Linux was Softlanding Linux System or SLS. It came with X, the basic utilities and such. After SLS came Slackware, still popular today, and Debian. More distribuitions continued to follow, such as Caldera, famous for openly accepting closed source software, and Red Hat, which led to many of the other distributions, including SUSE, Mandriva, and Fedora (which is really just the open ersion of RedHat.) Almost all distribuitions today are based directly or indirectly off Red Hat/Fedora, Slackware or Debian. {End Technical}
Starting out with Linux: The first thing you should do is pick a distribuition. First, decide: What's your multimedia support requirements? None, little, illegal but ethical (that is, comphrensive coverage that is illegal, but IMHO ethical,) or full legal. If you want none or little, any distribution is fine. Illegal but ethical works best with a distro like Debian, Mandriva, or Ubuntu. But keep in mind that unless you use PCLinuxOS, most multimedia functionality will have to be added on later - easy but perhaps inconveinent. For full legal multimedia functionality, try Xandros or Linspire.
Now more choices: Do you want ease of use, and at which level: Practical, dumbed-down or simply not much? Mandriva, SUSE, and PCLinuxOS. have practical ease of use. Ubuntu has quite a lot (but not as much as the above), and so does Knoppix, Fedora, and Damn Small (to some degree for Damn Small.) Xandros and Linspire are dumbed down, Linspire more then Xandros. Debian, Slackware, Gentoo and related Linuxes such as Arch and Vector are not practical for average use because of the difficulty.
What about breadth of applications? Do you require a rare application? The most apps are found in the biggest Linuxes, or those with access to the big kahuna's library. Gentoo has some of the widest variety, as does Fedora and Debian. Ubuntu has a fairly large library and can use much of Debian's library. As for applications built-in to the system, Mandriva, SUSE, and Debian (14 CDs!) have the largest built-in choice of applications.
Is price an issue? Mandriva has a free edition however it is not released at the same time as the pay edition. Mandriva charges about $40 for the basic pack and about $85 for the Professinal pack. SUSE charges about $60-70 for the Professinal pack and has a full-featured free edition immediately available. Fedora is only availiable freely. Same with Debian. Slackware is usually acquired freely. Same with Damn Small and Puppy Linux. PCLinuxOS is free. Linspire is $50 plus a subscription to CNR for $20 a year. Xandros is $90 (a lite edition is available for $50.)
My view is that get you get most bang for your buck with PCLinuxOS. It's entirely free (unless you want to buy CDs - that's about $4.00 including shipping at Linuxcd.org) and comes with most of what you need. You can get everything else off the net. If you have low-speed Internet, Ubuntu will ship you discs free. And for the power user, Debian comes on 14 CDs and is free to download (good luck getting it all downloaded though, even with broadband!)
Distro info:
Xandros:
Xandros was started with the vision of providing a easy to use Linux for everyone, regardless of Linux ability or even computer ability. Xandros also plans to make money off its vision by charging fairly large amounts for most versions. Nevertheless, Xandros includes much non-free software, is very easy to use, works great in businesses too and is quite powerful and flexible.
Linspire:
Linspire was started as Lindows with the idea of making a Windows-compatible Linux for everybody. Although the complete Windows compatibility never did materialize, Lindows (now Linspire) has created a easy to use Linux, preinstalled on many computers that has full multimedia support and costs $50. Once you buy Linspire, Linspire Inc. expects you to pay $20 a year if you want to install software above and beyond what comes with Linspire, unlike other distribuitions where software installs over the net are free.
Mandriva
Mandriva was started as Mandrake as a way to modify the popular Red Hat distribuition (now morphed into the Fedora distro) to be more user-friendly. Today Mandriva is no longer substantially based on Red Hat, and it has more or less accomplished its goal of being fairly easy to use (although there are easier IMHO) and still very powerful and capable of being a workstation or server. Mandriva is thus a multipurpose OS. Mandriva has a free edition available, but they recommend you subscribe to their Club (which is expensive) or buy it. Mandriva can play MP3s and appears to include some WMV8 and Quicktime 5 playing functionality but is generally lacking in multimedia support compared to Windows. However, a urpmi resource called the PLF makes adding multimedia support to Mandriva easier.
SUSE
SUSE (formerly SuSE) was started as a port of Slackware to German. It became a somewhat Red Hat-like distro that was easy to use, fully open and free to all. OpenSUSE now has released OpenSUSE 10.1. Despite a very easy to configure setup and attractive look, SUSE remains quite incapable of playing multimedia by default, but being popular, that's quite fixable.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu was created to make a truly free non-commercial distro, based on Debian, that was easy enough for anyone to use, whether in home or business enviornments, yet still good enough for advanced users. It's suprisingly good at living up to it's ambitious goal, but multimedia support is lacking. The PLF is also available for Ubuntu, however, as are some Debian resources, making using Ubuntu for advanced multimedia playback not too difficult.
Debian
Debian is one of the oldest active distros, created in 1994. Debian was created from scratch out of frusturations with SLS, then the dominant distro. It is truly open and non-commercial, has a huge library of software, and comes on 14 CDs! It is remarkably easy to install from the library also, due to its deb package management system. Debian also has some problems, such as difficulty of install, and difficulty of configuration.
Slackware
Slackware was also created in 1994 out of frusturations with SLS, but unlike Debian, Slackware was based on SLS. It has a reputation of being very stable and great for servers. Slackware was once the dominant distro, but difficulty of installing, maintaining, and using it, as well as the oudated packages (in the name of security and stability) have left many moving to other distros, such as Debian.
Gentoo
This distro was created, with a package management system based on BSD (that is, compile from source for most packages,) due to the author's liking of the package management in BSD and such, and his thoughts existing package management systems were clunky and hard to use. Gentoo has excellent package breadth, and lots of choice; it's also very fast. However, installing packages can take hours, updating the system is difficult, and installing is not for the faint of heart.
PCLinuxOS
This OS, in my opinion, is one of the best to hit the Linux front in a long time. Completely free and able to play most media files, DVD playback is just a few steps away. However, the one-CD installation means that many popular programs are omitted, and it's quite tied to the KDE enviornment.
MEPIS
This easy-to-use distro is a new kid to the block, just three years old, and Ubuntu based. It's possible to be a liveCD and is designed for newcomers to Linux.
Fedora Core
Fedora is a multipurpose distro oriented towards workstations and servers. It is completely free and as such, completely lacking in multimedia support. However, it has incredible flexibility, applications breadth, and you can overcome the multimedia limitations. Fedora development is sponsored by Red Hat, which uses Fedora for its Linux products.
Red Hat Linux
Red Hat was the name for the Linux that is now called Fedora. Back then, Red Hat came with support and was backed by the Red Hat company.
Kubuntu, Xubuntu
These are just Ubuntu with different desktop enviornments (look & feels;) KDE and Xfce instead of GNOME.
What's a package management system?
It's a way to install software on your Linux box. We recommend most users only install software using a package management system or else incompatibilities and installation difficulties could occur.
What about all those lightweight and liveCD distros?
I didn't cover those. Generally speaking, the most popular liveCDs are Knoppix, Kanotix, and MEPIS. The best lightweight Linuxes are Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux.
Hope you liked my distro guide!
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