What linux distribution should I install?

Ubuntu -

pros - easy to use, comes with a lot of shit, packages are all pretty current, I don't really have to think about what I'm doing(until something breaks)

cons - default themes/packages are ugly and fucked up, they fuck with everything and try to do it their way. Too many Ubuntards in the forums.

Debian

pros - a lot cleaner and straightforward than Ubuntu, very very stable. no compiling necessary, good community, low footprint.

cons - packages are really out of date in the "stable" version, In the past I remember even not being able to find certain less popular packages in the testing versions.

Gentoo

Pros - portage, so flexible. Great selection of packages, good community.

Cons - take forever to get a base system set up especially when compiling thing on top of thing. If you fuck something up you have to re-compile it the right way, like if you change up your USE flags or something. Lots of upkeeping, easy but time consuming.

Arch

Pros - best of both debian and gentoo in terms of packages.

cons - never got this set up correctly, actually I think I only got it to boot once. Not sure what was up but it seems a little weird.

This is why linux sucks, something looks promising, but there there is always something fundamentally wrong with how it is implemented. Everything feels incomplete.

Any other reccomendations?

I'm a Debian kind of dude

slackware

none

backtrack

Depends on what you want ofcourse.

I'm an Arch user myself and am really fond of it. Rolling-release (one of the things I couldn't do without), great documentation (the wiki is amazing) and it doesn't get in your way. You have to install and configure everything from the ground up though, so it might take a lot of work depending on your needs and experience. I use it as a seedbox, mediacenter and workstation without much issues.

But if you don't need bleeding edge, Debian Stable would probably be easier to set up and probably has better security.

linux mint

http://www.linuxmint.com/

basically ubuntu with a load of proprietary packages installed

Crunchbang Linux

At the moment the current release is Ubuntu 9.04 based, but the next version is currently in Alpha and is Debian Statler based. i'm looking forward to it getting a release soon. i spoke with the maintainer of the project, corenominal, over the weekend as he was in Liverpool for Oggcamp 2010 - he said that he'll be putting together another alpha soon and he's hoping to have a proper release out of the window very soon too.

Think of Ubuntu, but faster and with multimedia support already sorted with no hassle.

just upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 and it works great. i dun know much about computers or anything but i like it better than windows 7.