- Everyone and his brother has already written on the subject.
  More opinions than you can shake a stick at _should_ be findable
  through a brief netnews or Web search.

- Because everyone and co. have already expressed views, many are
  tired of hearing them.  

- For people's expressions of their views to be of any use 
  whatsoever, they would have to also clarify what is important to
  them in a distribution, and why.  This seldom transpires, but doing
  it protracts the discussion.

- For the price of a good dinner on the town, you can buy a jewel
  case of about five-six current distributions on CD-ROM, and
  with a modest expenditure of your time can then decide for yourself.

The latter would be my recommendation.  E.g.:

http://www.cheapbytes.com/ (includes the remains of http://www.lsl.com/)
http://www.linuxcentral.com/
http://www.cheaplinux.net/

Then, get a good tutorial book on Linux-based systems, such as _Running
Linux_, published by O'Reilly, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/runux3/ .

Later on, you'll also want a good _reference_ book:  _Linux in a Nutshell_,
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxnut3/ .