Cool, I'll check it out.

Ubuntu is easy to use, but I personally don't like Gnome that much so I hardly use it. Fedora Core is what I use but it is a bit of a bitch to work with (I prefer Ubuntu's Apt-get to Fedora's yum package manager). Kubuntu (The version of ubuntu that uses a different desktop environment) is nice but doesn't have enough packages for me.
Don't get me started on the different desktop environments.
If you're daring and have hard drive space, install several different distros and play around. Kubuntu and Ubuntu (I think) still ship free Cd's of their distros.

As for programming, just play around with simple languages like I do (I like Perl, python somewhat although I don't use it much). I started by learning PHP, actually, which isn't really a development language, but still, many concepts are similar.

Yeah, I'm gonna get Ubuntu.

BTW: Nice guitar Tanker, is it your's?

I think Gnome is fine. Of course, by now, my Gnome is hacked beyond recognition... but such is life.

(Edit: just remembered, I actually blogged about my desktop a month ago if anyone is interested. http://garoth.com/?p=20 )

Nice work Garoth. Hopefully I'll eventually be that good.

It's amazing what you can do with Linux visually. It really _can_ look better than OSX. If you really know what you're doing, Linux can be as easy as well. Package management, though, is a killer feature.

(Whenever you want some bit of software, you can download & install in automatically using a program thats on your computer. This is possible because all the software is free anyway. You can search by name & description.)