I would like to learn Linux but not sure what Operating System to choose. This is for work purposes, any ideas?

Start from a "friendly one", once you feel comfortable with it (which is quite quikcly), you could move on if you like. Ubuntu is an excellent start, it offers a working distribution and installs (so they claim) in 15-20 minutes ready-to-go.

After installation you should get used to the desktop environment, but that's not so important. More important is to understand the structure of the filesystem, your user permissions and some simple commandline tools (man, ls, mv, cp, cd, pwd, rm, cat..you should start by issuing in the console: )

After all the desktops change, and they're easily learned. The console usage (basic usage for a start) is more important, but most important is - this is my opinion - to understand how Linux differs from other systems. And the best way to learn is try doing things you do normally on some other operating system; if you fail to do the same tasks, find out why - try, search, ask.

Trial and error is the best teacher...good luck

dparmar,

Yeah start with a novice friendly Distro First then work your way up, PCLinuxOS is a good novice Friendly distro
http://www.pclinuxos.com/page.php?7

once you get your feet wet move onto the more advanced Distros

Debian
http://www.debian.org/

Slackware
http://www.slackware.com/

and if your feeling overly confident there is always Gentoo, wouldn 't reccomend it though.
http://www.gentoo.org/

also try the Linux Distro Chooser it will tell you your ideal distro
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

Jake

I am already in IT and have been for a while and confident with many windows OS's, do you think I may be able to use Red Hat 9?

I don't think there are any good reasons to go and install Red Hat 9 now. It's old and unsupported by Red Hat. If you want something like it, there's Fedora Core.

Thanks to all for your updates

Thanks to all for your updates

If you just want to try out Linux, I'd suggest a Live CD/DVD distro like Knoppix, it has good hardware detection and for the most part is good to go right from the CD. If you want to install to hard drive, the easiest I've found is Mandrake/Mandriva their partitioning setup is the easiest to use and understand, especially for setting up dual boot. (I'm using Mandriva 2005 LE right now on a Dell Inspiron 2650 dual booting with WinXP) The version of Linux you use comes down a lot to personal choice for GUI's I personally favor KDE over Gnome.

A main advantage to using a Live CD/DVD is that you don't need to make any changes to your system, while being able to try several different distros.

Ye, I'd say go with PCLinuxOS. t's actually a Live CD, so you can try it before you install it.
And about Ubuntu, You'll move on from that in about 5 minutes. It's that bad. I installed Kubuntu on my hdd, and I regret doing it. Yes, it's easy, but it's not really worth it. The download repositories don't even have gcc or the GIMP, so you can't get the programs you want easily. Without gcc, you can't compile most programs, so, well, it a bit self explanitory.

I'd say the definite learning platform is Slackware linux. It's easy to install but the configuration of the system is made by directly modifying the configuration files so the command line will come quite familiar fast

I admit my first distro was SuSE but I didn't learn much using it. I then swithed to slackware. After a short while I learned a lot from using linux. I knew how to compile kernel and other programs and how to modify scripts and all. I'd say the same thing as so many in here:
If you use SuSE,Debian,Gentoo,Fedora... you will learn SuSE,Debian,Gentoo,Fedora.
If you use Slackware... you will learn linux.

If u will try a live one I suggest puppy at www.puppyos.com. Since its small and without sudo(root). ANd use a old computer or change harddisk so you do not messup your windozzze. Good hacking.

Zenwalk! Why?

1. Small download, 410MB
2. Easy, but not TOO easy, to install
3. Works well on old hardware
4. Works fantastic on new hardware
5. Provides the basics (web, email, office, media etc) but lets you install more
6. Slackware based so very stabel
7. Conforms to 'proper' Linux ways of operating
8. Very good forum support
9. Regular updates that make it better and better