I've use many, many Web hosts. For shared go with bluehost.com, hostgator.com or 2mhost.com. For VPS, go with KVC.
Best paid host: Hostgaory (Reliability, reputation) Free host: 000webhost (Been with them for months, no downtime, amazing service.)
Every hosting panel is not difficult to set up, some of them are using their own custome control panels and some are using cpanel, plesk etc, they all provide auto install scripts, so it is not so difficult. hostgator, justhost, dreamhost, fatcow, they are almost same in features and they don't do anything bad untill your website reaches Thousands of visitors per day which is not easy. Try to buy multiple domain hosting like baby plan of hostgator not hatchling, once I made a mistake of buying single domain hosting because it was cheap but now I have 7 domains and I have 2 single hosting plans and now I am buying another so you can imagine how expensive in long term....
Shared hosting is you are provided with shared space and dedicated is that they provide your own cpu and hard disks on which only your website, VPS is virtual private server and its kind of same.