Thinking about buying a touch-compatible computer, but not sure (because I do prefer Linux over Win8 for obvious reasons) if there are any Linux OSs that would be compatible with that. I'm assuming not, but just in case... anyone know?

Thanks,
~Me

Every contemporary Linux OS should be touch-capable. The Linux kernel has included touch capability for years. I have a Lenovo Win7 graphics tablet with a touch screen; I've run Mint and Mageia on it directly and several other distros in virtual machines and every one of them has had touch screen capability.

The Arch wiki has an excellent article on this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/touchscreen

Thanks so much! Very helpful.

Glad I could help.

I have a Win8 touchscreen laptop that I installed Arch on. Most applications treat a tap like you clicked the mouse, and a drag across the screen like you clicked and dragged the mouse. So instead of scrolling, Firefox will select text. Some applications, like Google Chrome and the menus of my window manager (awesome) completely disregard it. The mouse cursor will move, but it doesn't actually click.

I haven't looked into this much, so there might be a way around these. Just thought that you might want to know this before you make your decision.

Android?

I can use my finger or pen to reply to this post on my Dell XT2

firefox os / ubuntu fone os

I'm not a fan of Unity, but that desktop works fine with touch screen devices. Firefox isn't touch friendly, but there is an addon for touch gestures that helps a lot. Usually, if the application isn't optimized for touch, then it registers touches as left mouse click (and hold). It also depends of the hardware or drivers support multi-touch. I have a Lenovo 2-in-1, but I mostly use it as a laptop rather than a tablet.

Looks like you're all set based on your comment and the description appears to indicate that you're going to get a desktop or laptop computer supporting touch and just use it with a desktop distribution. As has been said, pretty much most current distributions will work fine, they simply recognize the inputs of the touches similarly to mouse movements and mouse button presses.

Likely also there are touch screen calibration utilities included in the event that things aren't 100% aligned when you start using it; but also likely is that it will be pretty close.