SirDice, I don't really agree that FreeBSD is a very good way to begin learning to use unix. Debian on the other hand allows you to use it as a desktop distro without knowing very much and installs all the necessary drivers and everything for you, so it 'just works', and you can learn to use the command line of a fully capable system from the get-go instead of learning to use the unix command line while simultaneously learning to configure a BSD distro. Just my opinion though.