Thanks to Dragon's Bane for this info!

What is the difference between Debian, Red Hat, SuSe, etc.?

Linux is not the correct term. Linus Trovoldas (?) wrote the kernel that is used in the GNU Project. They call the GNU Project "Linux" out of respect and for marketing reasons (is sounds like Unix but it "is Not Unix") One thing MANY people do not realize... is that the Linux kernel is only a small (VERY small) part of the OS. There are, literally, thousands of pieces that go into a Linux "Distribution".

BSD is a collection of utilities, patches and assorted junk that the folks in Berkeley think is cool.

Red Hat got a ton of money and started giving out CD's for little or no money (can you say burn rate?) They also came up with this nifty thing called a "packet manager" which now everyone (?) uses. It is called (you guessed it) "Red Hat Package Manager" or RPM. It is a nice way to "manage the packages in your OS". So if you want, say X11 on your system, you just tell the OS Installer to install the X11 "package". You can query your system at any time and find out all the different packages that are installed. Better than that though... if you have the OS installed already and you want to add, say mod_perl, you can do it by specifying what package you want, and the OS will go out on the Net, grab it, install it, and you can use it immediately (no restart needed!). VERY slick.

Debian is famous for some things and SuSe others. Each distribution is different than the others in the utilities and extras they include. If you are just starting out... take any one you can get and install it. You can always install a different distribution later. And hey... it doesn't cost you anything but time =)