Help picking my first Linux Distribution
 

Hi,

I have been a Windows user for life so far and on my portable pc, my needs are extremely limited and I rely mostly on cloud technology. Because of this, I am looking for a Linux distro that will be very easy to use without much (if any) of a learning curve and was hoping someone could recommend some options to me.

What I need is:

1. A LiveCD, bootable from CD or USB
2. Google Chrome installed
3. Root and User accounts setup
4. Something similar to Windows Explorer that I can just go right click=>new=>folder to make a folder on the desktop and then easily save files into this folder. I've tried one distro and got completely lost as to where it was saving files to and couldn't figure out how to save on the desktop.
5. Something simple so that I can do basic things like install Adobe Flash. This was something else I had an impossible time doing with the distro I picked.
6. The ability to create a LiveCD once I have the desktop configured the way that I need.
7. Built in firewall. I understand an Antivirus isn't really needed.

Thank you for your time and help.

Most of the Linux distributions should be actually able to do the job. But there is going to be some learning to do. You are trying to switch to Linux from windows and both operating systems are different. Hence operating both is going to be different. Linux is not difficult, it is different. You learned to use windows, now is time to learn Linux. That is it.
Personally, I would suggest Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 as your desktop. But you would need to install Chrome and Flash player. But that is going to be point and click with Synaptic. So do not worry. It does can make LiveCD and comes with firewall options as well. You can install AV as well if needed. Root account by default is disabled but you can enable it. But I would not suggest.
Creating files and folders is also as simple as it can get.
Go for it.

Mint is basically Ubuntu with things like Flash pre-installed, so that would be even better.

Mint is best for a newbie !!

Linux mint is a great choice for a first distro simply because it comes with many restricted things installed out of the box. What I mean by that is stuff like flash, java etc. Mint is based off of the Ubuntu distribution. Some people find it more comfortable to use a KDE environment when the first switch from Windows to Linux, but you don't have to. Some other really good distros that are easy for beginners would be Fedora. I also hear that PC Linux is supposed to be good for beginners, but I haven't personally tried it myself yet, so I can't say definitively. I would just start trying out some distros. Eventually you will find one that you like more that the others.

ubuntu, mint, or pclinuxos with KDE would be good places to start. But I would also suggest Fedora and Suse as distros. Like mentioned above, just remember that Linux is NOT Windows and no matter what you do it won't act like windows. Which is a good thing. If you are looking to switch from Windows, then you obviously have some reason you dislike it. Linux may be able to fill that void

Actually, I'm a big fan of Windows, I really like it and it is simple. It's just there is a cost for Windows 7 and I have a portable pc that I use for cloud computing and just need an OS to get me on the net and everything else, I get from the cloud.

I downloaded a couple of distros last night and really do like Mint Linux. It's not Windows, but does have that feel.

One mistake I made in my original request is I said LiveCD. I had used the wrong terminology, it was actually a small distro with a "copy to ram" feature. I don't think Mint Linux has that, but I guess I can run off CD.

you can try http://peppermintos.com/ (it's kind of "Linux Mint Netbook Remix")

Since you are coming from Windows I could recommend using a KDE distro and the best one that comes to mind is openSUSE, soon openSUSE 11.3 will come out (in 3 days) and it seems to do everything you need. I also started with opensuse back in versions 10.x and it did it for me. It was very similar to Windows and i eventually made my switch :)