Mandrake, Red Hat, and SuSE are probably the most widely used distros. If you are brand new to Linux I would recommend Mandrake as it is very easy to install and configure (for the most part). The current version is 8.2 and can be downloaded from
www.linuxiso.org. There are three disk to the set, each of them is about 650MB of downloading. If you are on dial up this is probably not going to work for you. For a basic install though, you will only need to download disk #1 as #2 and #3 just have extras on them.
Your system specs will be improtant to know when you are installing. Linux does not always auto detect and install everything so you really need to know what is in your box. If you are on dial up and have a winmodem, you might be out of luck. Winmodems and Linux do not get along very well but there are some that work. Laptops can be tricky too. Usually this is an issue with video setups with Laptops.
Let me know if I can be of more help. Always happy to help bring someone else into the Linux world.
freezinbutt