I would strongly suggest Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic Koala'.

Secure, well-maintained, and one of the most stable distros I have ever used out of the box. Very fast, slick boot-up theme, extremely pleasant to use. Great software and documentation, combined with developer support and an active communtity, makes this the best distribution of Linux I have ever used. It's also very easy to use, yet very flexible for power users like me.

Only con is the System V init...but that is standard on Debian/Ubuntu systems. And a dedicated root account is always nice.

Overall though, it is a top-notch system, and my perosnal favorite.

5 stars.

I'd better say, it's standard on most GNU/Linux systems :-) except those which are Slackware-based (hello, Arch fan )

I use xubuntu

One thing I wanted to say is Windows XP does NOT burn ISO images without third-party software!

It will burn them as data DCs containing a single .ISO file, that's not what you want!

Also I've heard of many places to buy Linux Distro CDs, so you don't have to download/burn them yourself.

Get ImgBurn for burning .isos to CD or DVD on Windows. It's reliable and free.

http://www.imgburn.com/

on xp i use "InfraRecorder", a cygwin build

Ok, I've successfully burnt a live CD of LinuxMint! (the latest version.) So a couple more questions: how/can I access the internet from the CD version and how long should I wait for installation to start up? Thanks

Installation could take about 15-60 minutes.

If your computer is connected with a ethernet cable, you should have internet instantly with no config.

If you use wireless, you may have to install a driver.

If you have dial up, I don't know because I never set up a dial-up connection, but you probably wouldn't have been able to download the ISO with dial-up anyway.

I haven't used pclinux in a while but it is super easy to install and probably all hardware will be recognized. I have put it on 5 different computers and everything worked out of the box. Video, sound and if plugged into net it will be active. For each of those software packages you listed there will be several that will do the same. Linux comes with Firefox, ktorrent does a better job on p2p for me than limewire and I like amarok better than itunes. There are thousands of programs in the repositories for linux that will do most everything you need to do. Download the live cd and boot from the cd and you can check it out, if video,sound,browser and etc works just tap install and go to it.

Start with ubuntu it has great documentation
and is generally easy to use.
although i've only been on ubuntu for about 3 days
and a linux user for the same period.

You have a different username but you are acting as if you were the original poster.

I agree. Strange indeed. Maybe should we report it? Or no?

this was sort of a rhetorical suggestion

for example i'm gonna use(ubuntu)
therefore maybe you should too.

i will change my older post but leave this here

Oh, ok, sorry about that.

Someone already asked how you connect to the internet? Telephone, adsl, ...

Not sure what you mean? Boot from CD, select install and wait maybe 2 minutes? Or you have installed and now want to know how long the booting takes before you can use the system?