If you want to make things easy on yourself, give Mepis a try (www.mepis.com). You can run it from a CD so you don't have to install it to see what it's all about.
It gets criticized sometimes because it's not completely free software, i.e., it comes with Java and Flash, as well as drivers for nVidia and ATI cards. That doesn't matter much to me. But, almost everything is configured with a wizard or done automatically, and it supports a LOT of hardware. And, you can still download it for free.
My laptop, for example, is completely supported by Mepis. Everything works, including sound, video, network, CD burning, modem (you have to install a driver for this, but you can do it with a couple of clicks), wireless (the trickiest part, but not terribly difficult), and all were pretty painless to configure. A lot of these things will just configure themselves out of the box, in a lot of cases.
Just remember, the Court Jester will be your friend until you try Linux. Then he'll turn on you and start insulting you like he does the rest of us. To him, your software choice is more important than your basic humanity.
We actually keep a "lie and hypocrisy" list on the guy to document, in his own words, all of the deception, hatefulness, and cluelessness. It gets mind numbing at times.
If you try Mepis and have any questions, let me know.
Mepis is a good choice--finally got my friend to burn a disc and ran it at school.
Another good live CD is Slax. It's highly customizable (downloadable modules and Windows software to create a custom CD), and every time I've seen it work, the bare iso runs most everything out of the box.
FD; Echo--any other recommendations?