The only proper pronunciation is the one used by Linus Torvalds himself. The name Linux is a derivative of his name, and thus is pronounced like his name. This pronunciation has no basis in reality or linguistic derivatives. Usually a installer program is provided to aid in the installation process. Extra software comes in a mix of utilities and applications.
Some distributions are more suited for the home user.
Some other distributions caters for the server user. A good Linux distribution is Red Hat which is also the most popular. So from version 1.2.2 to 1.2.3, there were only bug fixes, and no new features. Versions n.x.y, where x is an odd number, are beta-quality releases for developers only, and may be unstable and may crash, and are having new features added to them all the time.