There are far to many distributions of Linux to go into all of them here. http://distrowatch.com has a pretty good comparison of almost all of them and a little bit of information about each. Don't be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, if you're new to Linux you probably want one of the main ones anyway. I personally use Mandrake and would recommend you consider it. It's pretty much a derivative of Red Hat with a few added things and a nicer installation process. If you have a friend that already runs Linux then I think Zaxo's advice of borrowing their cd is your best bet. I can't begin to express how much tech-support-for-food from friends has helped me over the years.

Disclaimer: This just my opinion. There are a lot of nice Linux distributions out there and each is good in it's own way. Basically, I'm not trying to start a distro war. Please don't flame me.

sm3g
perl -le 's;;uoli;;$a=length;y;g-w;e-u;;;$a--;s;j;$a;;print'