"a developer who is starting out." Lots of people will say "this distro for that reason," etc. None are hands down better than all the rest, and all of them ar

"a developer who is starting out." Lots of people will say "this distro for that reason," etc. None are hands down better than all the rest, and all of them are reasonable. Ubuntu is very popular, and it doesn't require too much knowledge to get started. After you've used Linux for awhile, you'll develop your own preferences and you can switch to whatever you prefer. If you want a slightly easier way to enable media, you could go with Mint, which is based on Ubuntu. http://distrowatch.com/ http://distrowatch.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution#Popular_distributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution#Popular_dist... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions The timeline graphic of that last one is interesting, it shows how each distro is derived from its parents. EDIT: It doesn't matter overly much, just start somewhere.