Debian is a little older and needs less configuration to get up and going than say gentoo. Download the distro for Debian and then when you install it just pick one of each optional software packages. You do not need 8 editors which is what will happen if you install everything.
I have used Debian as a workstation at work. It is quite stable on a sun workstation. Has lots of support but the support forums are a little unfriendly.
Gentoo is another package worth looking at. Its a newer distro on the linux world. I am using this at home now , running a custom build of it with mythtv on it as my htpc.
I have another box at home with suse on it which i use as honeypot and then a old box running mandrade on it as my firewall and printserver.
Picking a distro can be tricky as it is your first time it could make you hate linux as you have to learn to change Users to install stuff and do stuff. Do not give your regular user root access.
I recommend you look at the distro's i mentioned and then look at the hardware you have and then see which one supports all the hardware and go with that one at first. Since it will be a desktop station with some add on server apps you have many distro's to choose from to play with. They are all good. I do not know why Fyron is all over Debian.
http://www.ibiblio.org/
http://www.linuxiso.org/
http://www.linux.org/
http://www.justlinux.com/
some links for you... here you will find info, distro, apps
So go read and try...