Sorry, I don't know what a Linux ditro is. Yes, I am looking for a reliable vendor that offers laptops with Linux pre-installed. Any advice on the desktop program, i.e. which is better? Lindows? Red Hat? Linspire? and all the others out there?

Sorry; I both mistyped and used a slang term. A *distro* is a distribution, in this case of an operating system variant. I use SuSe Linux Pro, which my vendor installed for its price of ~$60.

Additionally, down the road I will be researching video capture and editing suites (open source or otherwise) suitable for a Linux environment,

I know of only one, MainActor, which has a price and which I've never been able to get working very well.

but for now I'll be happy with the basics--an office suite, email and browsing.

SuSe as installed comes with OpenOffice, at least as good as Microsqush office. It also includes Firefox browser. HW