Getting started

[Odd Martin Baanrud]

Hello,

I plan to install Linux on a 21 GB harddrive.
I have some questions, which I hope someone can answer.

What distribution should I use?
Is it possible to get my Braille Voyager functioning durring the installation?
And/or, is it possible to get speech?
I don't have an external synth, so it must be via the sound card.

Witch programs are the best for:
* Mail
* News
* Web browsing
* Listening to diffrent kinds of multimedia.
* IRC
* Speech
* Sound recording/editing
* OCR
* CD-recording

Also, is the version of Skype for Linux accessible with braille/speech?
Does it exists a version of MSN for Linux?

Well, this were many questions. I hope someone can answer them, so I 
can have some basic things to start with.

Martin