I keep a mini (~100) epub/pdf library on my phone for those occasions.

I started with linux mint, and if I had to start again I would still go with mint as my first distro. It was just familiar enough while allowing me to figure out what was different on linux. I only switched to arch due to the quality of the wiki and the AUR (after a short trial run of manjaro).

At least it makes me feel good that I only just got a set for the first time last week and figured all those out within 5 min of actually using them.