Whatever distro you choose LinuxQuestions is a good place to come for help. Generally its relaxed, although like any other forum it has had its flame wars and trolls. The mods seem quite fair in my experience, although if they feel you are off-topic for the sub-forum they are quick to move it to the relevant one or merge the thread, which is why this thread might end up in 'Linux Distributions' forum.

We are not afraid to be silly here either, for a while one of the longest and most read threads was 'The Ultimate "When Will The Next Slackware Release Arrive" Megathread', which got very silly at times

PS: Have a go at Slackware or one of its offspring like Zenwalk or Vector, you might just like it