I think I got my first exposure to linux with Mandrake 7 something. I went to Libranet for a while...I even paid for it. Used Mepis for quite a while as well. I resisted the newcomer Ubuntu for a long time, but now it's all I use.
Ubuntu 10.4’s pretty nice, what with the cloud feature and all.
Linux Mint (Ubuntu derivative) has the closest “look and feel” to Windoze that I’ve come across so far.