I think that what you start with depends on your needs in the future, combined with your musical abilities.
If for you, music is essentially compiling, manipulating and tweaking short or long already recorded source material, the loop based tools are pretty good. If you want to record real instruments, or deal in any way with MIDI, then loop based sequencing can often fail to please. You get good at using it, then come up against real brick walls, where the software doesn't just do things poorly, but often cannot do it at all! Trouble is, this means you guessing at your destination when you haven't even started.
If you have some real synths, samplers, and can play something - the fruity loops might not be right for you, but if all you have is the computer and some decent monitors, and want a band in a box style approach - it might.
Maybe draw up a list of essentials, nice if possibles and occasional features and see if Fruity Loops fits?
I started with Cubase, found it hard then - around 94, think, on an Atari, in black and white and the notion of a mouse and icons was brand new! Loads of people say how hard Cubase is, but it's just a complex bit of kit that takes real time to get to know well. I hate Logic - but this is ONLY because it's different, and I don't know my way around it, meaning when I have to use it I'm slow and that causes resentment. My friends who use it HATE Cubase for exactly the same reason. I used to use a simple graphics package, hating Photoshop, until I needed to learn it, and now I really can't see why I did not use it earlier, apart from laziness!
