We where all newbies once
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As to which Distro to use, ask 10 Linux users that question and you'll receive 10 different answers. I've been using Linux both commercially and personally for seven years and have tried a lot of distro's in that time. There's not a great deal to seperate any of them. I've no experience of PCLinuxOS but Mandrake, now Mandriva, used to be a good beginners distro and OpenSuse is also quite user friendly.