Reddit reviews LaTeX: A Document Preparation System (2nd Edition)

First one thing, Linux and Unix is not only a family of computing platforms but also a security culture. It all boils down to keeping control of your computer. To make best use of Linux' security advantage, you have to learn and follow certain rules - the most important one being: Never run any untrusted program. Also, never ever use untrusted data from the Internet with formats which mix data and executable code such as macros".

Regarding your question, it would be really helpful if you could be more specific what your level of experience is and what you want to do! Some thoughts and additional suggestions to those already given:

• Use a distro which has a strong system for signing and verifying software packages. This is important to keep control what runs.
  
  
• Mint does not has the best security record, its download page was compromised and it turned out to be hard to check their download installation image for the PGP signature.
  
  
• Ubuntu has already been mentioned and I think it is a good fit to what many people need. An interesting alternative might be Debian - it requires that you read through some stuff to get a bootable medium. However after installing, IMO it is equally easy to use as Ubuntu. Another nice alternative is SolydXK which is also a derivate of Debian but more geared towards small enterprises and home office.
  
  
• If looks matter a lot, I'd suggest to try Elementary OS - for my own taste, it is a bit too limited. But what I think is very valuable is the goal to create a more consistent GUI!
  
  
• Have a look at Arch Linux, too - it is "user friendly" in a different way.
  
  
• Distributions have usually some default desktop but essentially, the choice of desktop is more or less orthogonal to the distribution, you can largely install and change them independently. From the GUI systems, I personally like the GNOME shell. Before deciding, I'd definitely give also KDE a try - for example, I think KDEs Krusader is one of the best file managers for more experienced users around.
  
  Regarding specific applications:
  
  
• Apart from raster graphics programs, there is inkscape, which is a vector graphics program similar to CorelDraw. Also, there is Krita.
  
  
• For writing text, I'd suggest to have a look at AbiWord, which is a fast, slimmed down variant of a word processor that can export all the common formats. However if you intend to write anything larger than say, ten pages, or something which needs footnotes or an index, then I'd really suggest to learn a little bit if LaTeX, which gives far more satisfying results. I think the best book on LaTeX ever is Leslie Lamports LaTeX: A Document Preparation System". It would be foolish not to spend a few bucks on really good docs!
  
  What more do you want to do?
  

I still find LaTeX's author's original book useful.

But if you are trying to start out with LaTeX, the canonical tutorial is lshort2e.

No, not Donald Knuth's The TeXbook that taught the TeX system Knuth designed (pdf search), but Leslie Lamport's classic LaTeX2e book that taught the LaTeX system Lamport designed on top of TeX (pdf search).

The book by Leslie Lamport (http://www.amazon.ca/LaTeX-Document-Preparation-Leslie-Lamport/dp/0201529831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300579479&sr=8-1) is a really nice introduction.

The TeXbook isn't really appropriate for LaTeX. You want LaTeX: A Document Preparation System.

Unfortunately it's rather dated at this point, so it'll need to be supplemented with info from the web about fonts, colors, PDF, XeTeX vs LuaTeX, and so on.