Check out Distrowatch
http://distrowatch.com/

It has a search feature, news about upcoming releases, and links to the projects pages and download mirrors.

Hi there,

Linux is growing immensely! A lot of material should be widely available.

What I would suggest is starting with Ubuntu. Most people start with something as simple as Ubuntu as it still resembles Windows and is very easy to use. This is a good introduction. Then you can start playing around with the 'hardcore' stuff, such as whitebox, red hat, fedora etc.

What I did, is i bought a Ubuntu Bible to walk through the entire operating system from DHCP configurations to how the games work. I think thats a good start. It will give you an overall perspective of the entire operating system.

Once you know a bit more, i suggest that you join a linux group. These are often found in areas with high interest in IT, sometimes it is only limited to schools and universities or obviously online. So find an online Linux group and have the experts help you out when you get stuck with anything.

Regarding tutorials and ebooks, this is something that you should build up a repository over time. I would gladly share mine, but I cannot validate all of the sources and I don't think I'm allowed to post anything up that is not my property. Sorry about that...

With more and more of the world going open source, they are making it quite easy. It should be really easy to get sources. Just google "ubuntu ebook" or "ubuntu tutorial", I'm sure you will find hundreds of helpful sources.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

I have started a new post in this section titled " Choosing the right Distro" , you can read that for more info. I'll keep updating it.

Loads of books out there, but for a complete beginner, I'd go with either Fedora 11 or Ubuntu 9, and pick the "Perfect Desktop" tutorial from howtoforge.com

I like some of Fedora 11 but it seems very buggy. The installer crashed on me repeately and package management seems slow. The upside was it detected all my H/W and fixed some annoying bugs I had before.

Ubuntu seems more stable in my opinion.

For new learners I will suggest Ubuntu or Kubuntu. These are all the distros which are available free of cost and even shipping. Kubuntu with KDE 4.2 really awesome. The internet configuration and application installation is also very friendly.

Linux Tutorials:
http://www.lofwatlinux.com/
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
http://www.linux.org/lessons/
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/

Ebooks
http://linuxebooks.com/
http://www.onlinecomputerbooks.com/free-linux-books.php

Ubuntu Linux 9.04 - It's easy for beginners, but is also one that is very suitable for more experienced users too

or

Debian Lenny - A little more in depth if you will, but gives you a lot of control in my opinion

Hope I helped

Ubuntu and Debian are very similar except debian uses less bleeding-edge versions, making it more stable, but sadly meaning it doesnt have the latest and greatest features and hardware support. Only problem is it sticks very hard to its free software morals, so it means its a bit of a pain in the ass for multimedia codecs and firmware.

The ubuntu/debian relationship is similar in some ways to the fedora/red hat enterprise relationship.

not even close