Linux Distros

Suse
Suse is the German Distro that has been purchased by Novell and is one of the simplest desktops available for linux. Suse have some serious Enterprise Server packages and offer good support too for all their products. They're collaborating with Microsoft!.
http://www.novell.com/linux/

Red Hat
Redhat are the Linux heavyweights. With excellent support for their enterprise servers and software they are known for reliability and strength.
http://www.redhat.com/

Fedora
Fedora is Red Hat's cutting edge project. Here developers gather in their pursuit of the best operating system and platform that Free software can provide.
http://www.redhat.com/fedora/

Gentoo
Gentoo is about choice. It's not the easiest distro to get up and running but the documentation and tutorials are a worth while experience. This is a fantastic resource. Even if you don't install their Distro, you can learn a lot from the tutorials on their site.

Gentoo Linux is a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.
http://www.gentoo.org/

Ubuntu
Based on a stable version of Debian, Ubuntu has taken the Linux Community by Storm! The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Damn Small Linux, a.k.a. DSL
DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

Having Linux on a USB is a great way to impress girls.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Puppy!
Puppy runs in RAM! Download it, burn it and plonk it in your CD drive and it runs without writing to your hard drive.
http://www.puppylinux.org

Knoppix
KNOPPIX ist eine komplett von CD oder DVD lauffähige Zusammenstellung von GNU/Linux-Software mit automatischer Hardwareerkennung und Unterstützung für viele Grafikkarten, Soundkarten, SCSI- und USB-Geräte und sonstige Peripherie. KNOPPIX kann als produktives Linux-System for den Desktop, Schulungs-CD, Rescue-System oder als Plattform für kommerzielle Software-Produktdemos angepasst und eingesetzt werden. Es ist keinerlei Installation auf Festplatte notwendig. Auf der CD können durch transparente Dekompression bis zu 2 Gigabyte an lauffähiger Software installiert sein (in der DVD "Maxi" Edition über 9 Gigabytes).

or in other words...

KNOPPIX is a bootable Live system on CD or DVD, consisting of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it (over 8GB on the DVD "Maxi" edition).

http://www.knoppix.org/

Myth Tv
MythTV project is an open source software Personal Video Recorder. It lets you build a box similar to a TiVo or ReplayTV, but much more powerful - and more easily modified.
http://www.mythtv.org/

Debian
Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 15490 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.
http://www.debian.org/

Slackware
When a friend of mine started using slackware I said "How can you use a distro with the word slack in it?". That was because I was a n00b and English was his second language.

On the contrary: System Administrators love Slackware and it's excellent for getting your familiar with Linux and how to configure it. If something is broken then a Slackware SysAdmin can probably fix it.

Since its first release in April of 1993, the Slackware Linux Project has aimed at producing the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there. Slackware complies with the published Linux standards, such as the Linux File System Standard. We have always considered simplicity and stability paramount, and as a result Slackware has become one of the most popular, stable, and friendly distributions available.
http://www.slackware.com/

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