Starting Linux

I may take Linux programming next semester and i would like to get a head start on it. What is the best/easiest Linux type for that, and what literature should i look for?
thx in advance

ed? Bollocks to that. If you want to write a text file use echo. If you want to make changes to your file use sed. Editors are for nancies.

>>12
Echo requires a shell, shells are bloat, use ed as your login shell.

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  59428 2005-12-03 18:25 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 100884 2006-02-12 13:50 /bin/sed
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 501268 2005-12-18 18:32 /bin/zsh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 863704 2006-02-18 15:58 /bin/bash