So if someone could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

That's a religious question right up there with Ford/Chevy, Windows/Mac, emacs/vi etc...

For a no-commitment play-around test, try Knoppix. It's a Linux distribution that can run from CD, no installation to the drive at all. Things are a bit slow - CD is slower than drive and stuff is also compressed to cram more than 2GB of software onto the CD - but it's very useful for a look around. Auto detects an impressive amount of hardware...

It can also be installed to disk if you want - Knoppix is based on Debian, with a mix of packages from stable, unstable and testing branches (stability as to which version of software included, not necessarily stability - though stable tends to be just that...), so after installation you can convert it to a Debian system.

Debian is often not a first time Linux users choice due to perceived installation difficulty, but many switch to it after a while, and few seem to switch away...

For ease of first installation I'd look at RedHat or SuSE, Debian is trickier to install but easier to maintain/upgrade.

All IMHO.

/Michael