Different distro formats
 

I started to download a distro at Kinko's until I found out that it would take 3 hours. I have a friend who has a burner that I can use to do it. The question I have is, I ran into 3 different types of downloads. Which one is optimal and easiest to use? I don't have Bit Torrent set up to convert a torrent file, nor will it be there after I format my hard drive, I have no idea what the Gnu-whatever deal is, and this leads me to believe that the .ISO is the one to go with, though I don't have any experience working with one of those. When I download the .ISO, is it readable on the disk as a directory within a disk, as an executable file, or zip file?

I am probably downloading a Knoppix distro for starters, just to try out the Live version, but I get all of these different mirrors showing up in a hundred different languages. There is probably little risk in accidentally downloading a distro programmed in the wrong language. English probably means that it is in English, so this is probably a moot point.

What happens when you want to download a distro that is larger than 700 megs? Some Knoppix distros are 693 megs while some are 3 gigs. Are these just compressed at different rates, or do they have different levels of complete functionality?

An .iso is a disk image. You have to burn it with the command (provided in any burning software) "burn image".

A .iso larger than 700 meg is intended to be burned on a DVD-rom.

Knoppix is basically a live cd so you can test it without any risk for your PC. An you can install it too. Knoppix is based on Debian, which is the most community-friendly distro.

This should answer all your questions - http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Downloading_FAQ