You can check here for software links when you've gotten on your feet.
http://home.student.uu.se/maol9883/alternative.html
Ubuntu is a nice distribution for newcomers or you can do it the hard way (and learn a lot in the process) like I did and install Gentoo. It's a pain in the behind, but when you finally get it working you'll feel like a GOD and you will have learned more in a week than most n00bs do in a year going with a easier distribution like for example Linspire or Xandros.
Ubuntu is somewhere in the middle. It's get your hardware working on the fly hopefully, but you'll have to do the tweaks yourself.
I started out with Mandrake, but left for Gentoo after two weeks when I felt that "If I want to learn Linux I might as well go all the way."
Next time I buy a computer I will probably run Ubuntu. It's not the pain Gentoo was to install and it's quite tweakable and I like that. Gentoo is extremely tweakable since you compile everything from scratch.
If you do decide to do it the hard way, I've documented some of my issues here:
http://home.student.uu.se/maol9883/gentoo.html