a little overwhelmed

[Rob DeZonia]

Thanks to those who have answered my newbie questions so far.
Unfortunately for me, answers to my questions promote other questions.
:)  If someone could recommend a good Linux primer that may help.  
     I guess the thing that gets me is the number of different flavors
(for lack of a better word) of Linux, Redhat, Debian, Slackware.  Does
each flavor require a different program to make speech available? My
head is spinning. lol  Anyway if someone can tell me a good resource
I'd be grateful, and ultimately so will you because my questions will
be infrequent.

          Rob