I have been experimenting with Linux for about ten years now. Back then, you read a lot about Linux, learned about Linus Torvalds and started using words like distro and abbreviating Microsoft M$. Then you either decided on a distro and found hardware that it would run on or looked hard at your hardware and then found a distro that would play nice with it, you hoped. The two killers were network and video. Hope and pray that your video card was Linux friendly because it is really hard to troubleshoot a video driver when you can't see the screen. Did I mention you needed to learn to love the command line again?
If you want, you can still download and create a command line only Linux computer. CentOS is one. It makes a great server and it can be up and running in about an hour. It is not a good desktop.
I am a fan of the Ubuntu based desktops. I have built three or four different versions, and they all share some great features:

• Demonstration and Installation from a LiveCD. ¹⁾
• Answer a few questions, run the wizard, and have a new computer in about an hour.
• Very basic system requirements.
• A helpful user base. Friendly too.

My current favorite is PeppermintOS. It is a lightweight variant of Linux Mint which is in turn a variant of Ubuntu ²⁾
There are other variations based on Ubuntu. It has radically changed the Linux world. I can not stress this enough. The Ubuntu community is by far and away the friendliest and most forgiving of new users. If you want “How do I…?” to be answered with “Like this…” You want the Ubuntu community.

Somewhere, there is a Linux hardliner who is freaking out because I am not talking about distros. Sorry. Distro, short for distribution, a version of Linux. Distrowatch keeps statistics on Linux distributions and ranks the top 100. This might be a good time to point out that hard core Linux users find the 8 versions of Windows 8 an example of how wrong Microsoft is.
I use Peppermint because my first Linux laptop is a Dell D610 that was shipped at the end of September 2005. It has 1Gb of RAM, a 1.86GHZ Pentium M chip and a 40Gb hard drive. It had an interchangeable 3.5“ floppy drive when it was new. It takes one of its sister computers more than two minutes to get to the Windows XP login screen. Peppermint will be running in half that if you can remember your password.
Hardware Requirements for Selected Linux Distributions