SQL Left Join first match only

Add an identity column (PeopleID) and then use a correlated subquery to return the first value for each value.

SELECT *
FROM People p
WHERE PeopleID = (
    SELECT MIN(PeopleID) 
    FROM People 
    WHERE IDNo = p.IDNo
)

Use Cross Apply or Outer Apply, this way you can limit the amount of data to be joined from the table with the duplicates to the first hit.

Select 
    x.*,
    c.*
from 
    x
Cross Apply 
    (
        Select 
            Top (1)
            IDNo,
            FirstName,
            LastName,
            ...., 
        from 
            people As p
        where 
            p.idno = x.idno
        Order By 
            p.idno //unnecessary if you don't need a specific match based on order
    ) As c

Cross Apply behaves like an inner join, Outer Apply like a left join

SQL Server CROSS APPLY and OUTER APPLY

distinct is not a function. It always operates on all columns of the select list.

Your problem is a typical "greatest N per group" problem which can easily be solved using a window function:

select ...
from (
  select IDNo,
         FirstName,
         LastName,
         ....,
         row_number() over (partition by lower(idno) order by firstname) as rn 
  from people 
) t
where rn = 1;

Using the order by clause you can select which of the duplicates you want to pick.

The above can be used in a left join, see below:

select ...
from x
  left join (
    select IDNo,
           FirstName,
           LastName,
           ....,
           row_number() over (partition by lower(idno) order by firstname) as rn 
    from people 
  ) p on p.idno = x.idno and p.rn = 1
where ...

After careful consideration this dillema has a few different solutions:

Aggregate Everything Use an aggregate on each column to get the biggest or smallest field value. This is what I am doing since it takes 2 partially filled out records and "merges" the data.

http://sqlfiddle.com/#!3/59cde/1

SELECT
  UPPER(IDNo) AS user_id
, MAX(FirstName) AS name_first
, MAX(LastName) AS name_last
, MAX(entry) AS row_num
FROM people P
GROUP BY 
  IDNo

Get First (or Last record)

http://sqlfiddle.com/#!3/59cde/23

-- ------------------------------------------------------
-- Notes
-- entry: Auto-Number primary key some sort of unique PK is required for this method
-- IDNo:  Should be primary key in feed, but is not, we are making an upper case version
-- This gets the first entry to get last entry, change MIN() to MAX()
-- ------------------------------------------------------

SELECT 
   PC.user_id
  ,PData.FirstName
  ,PData.LastName
  ,PData.entry
FROM (
  SELECT 
      P2.user_id
     ,MIN(P2.entry) AS rownum
  FROM (
    SELECT
        UPPER(P.IDNo) AS user_id 
      , P.entry 
    FROM people P
  ) AS P2
  GROUP BY 
    P2.user_id
) AS PC
LEFT JOIN people PData
ON PData.entry = PC.rownum
ORDER BY 
   PData.entry