I really think Mandrake is a great disto to start off using. If offers a great looking GUI, easy installation, and the community support is good.
Suse 9.1 (which you can download now) is also a fun disto. You can also try the live bootable cd version, which is also available for download.
You might want to check out :
www.distrowatch.com/
www.linuxiso.org/
www.linux.org
The beauty of linux is: You can try all of the distros!!!