The differences between paid OS and freely distributed, as far as I know, is their customer services & support.. If you're using free OS such as Ubuntu or Fedora, the only support you'll get is from the distro's community. But if you're using the paid one, you'll the support from the vendor..

Correct me if I'm wrong 

In term of programming, any distro should do the jobs. But, for a beginner in Linux/*nix, IMHO, do consider using a popular & n00b-friendly distro such as Ubuntu due to their large community. So, if we stuck on something, chances are, there's already (or will be soon) a solution posted out there. And, as far as I know, there's a lots of tutorial related to Ubuntu on the Net at this moment. I'm also rely on this bunch of tutorial since I got nowhere to turn when I got stucked on something.

So, its a matter of n00b friendly and community, IMHO, when its your first time trying a Linux, ALONE! Unless you've already got a teacher or some-sort-of-guru friends, than thats another story

p/s: I'm not an Ubuntu council members or anything, even not a members of local Ubuntu group (most of them too SOMBONG & BERLAGAK  even bukan semua la..). Its just, by Ubuntu I gain my experiences on Linux/*nix 

hey buddy, do opensuse got a gnome desktop environment ?
i'd love to try but dont like kde 

Like ubuntu is default nice with gnome, openSUSE is just nice with KDE. I've been try to use gnome at openSUSE but no ok...

you called?? 

YEAH!!! SLACKWARE IS THE BE..

*b!tch slapped by mods for posting offensive word in RWI*

i find most of the distribution would stick with KDE, and sometimes i find them a bit odd... might be gnome having too much dependencies that force them to choose KDE? or issit KDE with it's window-ish interface actually drag user closer compared to gnome mac-ish layout??

for me... i just hate the foot logo...