Electronic Supplies, Microcontroller choice question.

I'm an amateur and I'd want to start by creating my own PCB development
board, not actually go out and buy one but make one, design in FreePCB
and then ship it off for fabrication. I've decided that the best way to
go is to start on a breadboard and then design the PCB after manual
verification, at least go as far as I can go.

First what type of microcontroller should I use? I want something
that's well supported, stable and is capable of running uCLinux (not
absolutely required but would be nice). I've been looking into Texas
Instruments, Freescale, and Microchip products. Most importantly is the
compiler availablity. There needs to be a free compiler, I'm already
spending enough money on parts, to go along with the chip. I have
experience using 6812 processors but I'd prefer to move on beyond that.
Other than that the microcontroller just needs to be flexible if it has
some extra bells and whistles that's perfectly fine, I'm not trying to
build an ultra low power device, at least not yet.

One major thing I'm confused about is all these packaging types like
SOIC and so on, I understand PDIP and that's pretty much it. And how
would I get them on the breadboard?

I probably need a new soldering iron, preferably a fine tip one which
ones are good? Not sure too much about branding in the electronics
field.

Lastly, what's a list of some websites to get electronic supplies?

.

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