>Fedora, openSUSE or Ubuntu. Can't really go wrong with any of them.
Yes. The experience will be the same: you'll have issues sooner or later, and someone on a forum will tell you, why didn't you use one of the other two, or some alternative distro.
This may be slightly unpopular, but Ubuntu's Unity interface is probably the easiest for a newbie. It has a big dock with big buttons, the search feature is accessible, and it has a relatively tame look. Gnome shell is my favourite, but things are hidden and windows are always flying around. KDE has too many options - too much opportunity for newbies to get confused or to mess something up and not know how to fix it.