New Linux User?!?

Okay, i'm putting in an old Harddrive in my computer today so I can run Linux.  I've done some reasearch, but I don't know any Linux users first hand.

So, i'm a noob that would like to learn unix/linux...should I jump right in and go for Slackware or go for something like Ubuntu?  Or should I go with another distro altogether?  I'm not really going to be using it for anything other than programming/learning linux, because i'll be doing all my gaming/ect through my XP HD (hopefully).

The BSDs are also good: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc. A bit more of a learning curve, but you won't have to mess around with stupid  primary/logical disk partitions--why haven't they fixed that in Linux?