Not sure why BlitzMax wouldn't work on just about any distro, presuming you can satisfy the dependencies. A while ago a few of us in the community provided instructions on how to install on various distros. The main thing is to at least install the development packages (GCC) after which you can usually figure out what you need through your package manager.
Ubuntu is by far one of the most popular desktop distros at this time, and the default install is simple and quite useful, it fits on a single CD, etc, which are good reasons to recommend it.
You can always download it, try it out (it runs without installing so you can always see if it'll handle your hardware) and decide whether to install it or not. Obviously if you're worried about a modem, downloading might not be an option, in which case they still send out CDs for free.
You can also install Winmodems under Ubuntu, you don't need a "commercial" distro for that.
This might be useful. They even have an Ubuntu binary you can download. It's a commercial product though.
I would generally not recommend trying to use Linux with a modem anyway, since to get the most out of it, you're going to want to download lots of stuff, which means broadband.
Ubuntu is by far one of the most popular desktop distros at this time, and the default install is simple and quite useful, it fits on a single CD, etc, which are good reasons to recommend it.
You can always download it, try it out (it runs without installing so you can always see if it'll handle your hardware) and decide whether to install it or not. Obviously if you're worried about a modem, downloading might not be an option, in which case they still send out CDs for free.
You can also install Winmodems under Ubuntu, you don't need a "commercial" distro for that.
This might be useful. They even have an Ubuntu binary you can download. It's a commercial product though.
I would generally not recommend trying to use Linux with a modem anyway, since to get the most out of it, you're going to want to download lots of stuff, which means broadband.