Question about Linux

I'm trying to get started with using Linux. I am aware that there is one Linux and many different versions to it (e.g. RedHat, Ubuntu, and more). Which version do most of the companies/organizations use for their servers? Thank you.

I've never been a very big linux desktop fan, but I've been running linux servers for years.  I've used Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS to name a few.  I'd probably recommend Ubuntu for a beginner, but I've heard a lot of good things about Mint.  I always keep a live cd around just in case.

yes, the core terminal functions (you call it command line interface, which is right, but of course the commands are much different than DOS) will remain the same. Debian is what Ubuntu is based upon, and Mint is based upon Ubuntu. Since they are all open source, they like to (and are allowed to) use the code from each others' distribution as a base for their own. Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux distro, and it has the most online support, but you also find that most of it seems not complicated enough, which is fine for most users (like me), but some would rather learn the in's and out's of the OS and have a more base distro to work with, so maybe a more base distro will be right for you. many users prefer more CLI and less GUI, so a more base distro would be good for that type of person, although I personally prefer a GUI and think it can accomplish most everything efficiently in Linux distributions. you also should learn about desktop environments and what you want to use, such as gnome, kde, or xfce for starters.

http://distrowatch.com/
lists distributions and descriptions of Linux and BSD. this is probably a good start for you, but do Linux first, maybe BSD later. browse wikipedia! learn more about linux, try some liveCD's (where you run off of a CD without installing) and see what you like

It was a while since I used Fedora, but they had RPM installers.  This was a huge pain since it wouldn't download the required dependencies for you for a given program to install, and in my case it had many recursive dependencies that the system needed to have first.

In other words I had to go up the tree and install about 10 other things before I could get the original software to install...  Given that was about 6 years ago, and when I had practically no knowledge of what I was doing.

I'd try Ubuntu first, it'll probably run sorta slow, and you definitely won't be able to do much of anything (But with those specs, you wouldn't be able to do much on very many OS')

If Ubuntu doesn't work... Well, you tried. I don't know anything about XUbuntu.

Good luck. Also, some Ethernet and wireless cards aren't supported out of the "box", so you might have a hard time with the dependencies and stuff if you don't have internet.

i had a windows XP laptop that was messing up so i installed Mint8 on it...  it's not great, but it CERTAINLY has been running better on Mint...  it's probably cause it's a piece of crap, but it's running now so i guess that's a win...