[Nottingham] Best distribution with apt for a newbie?

[Simon Osborne]

I'm stuck in a muddle trying to find a distribution that gives me 
everything I want. I know next to nothing about Linux so I really need 
something that is simple to install with a graphical installer, but 
powerful enough to grow as I learn more about the system.

A distribution with apt would be ideal.

Up to now I've tried the following:

Fedora core 1 - Easy to install, but the update servers are very slow 
and I couldn't find any mirrors.
SuSE 9 - Killed it installing KDE 3.2 beta (oops) FTP install puts me 
off bigtime
Lindows - Quick & Easy to install, but apt is a pain to get working 
correctly for me
Mandrake - I can't stand it. It's way too bloated and slow on my system.

I'm thinking a debian based distribution would be best. I've looked at 
Morphix but the installer didn't give me any options for setting more 
than one partition (I like to have a seperate /boot) and I was deadly 
scared about it killing my Windows drives (which I do need for now).

Any ideas?

Simon