since he's having problems with rpm's (red hat package manager) you can rule our gentoo, since it uses emerge similar to debian's apt or bsd's port system. since bsd isn't linux, but a clone of Berkeley unix, you can also rule that out. debian and gentoo probrably run neck in neck as far as learning curve, but imo debian is a much more mature distro. true you compile gentoo from source via tarballs, but you can do this with debian as well (any distro for that matter). gentoo just lacks certain key tools i've come to love about debian, apt & pseudo being only 2. i like bsd alot myself, it's more stable straight out of the box, the only think i dislike about it is the lack of procfs. personally i'd suggest mandrake for a beginner.