So new to Linux, haven't even picked my distro, plan to run dual, have installed 2nd drive, researching distros currently. Any, all advice welcome.

Happy holidays!

Greetings and welcome!

Are you most interested in Desktop use, or server/services? The advice would be different for the two.

With Windows, are you a general user, power user, Programmer, or System Administrator?

This will also affect how we answer.

Finally, are you comfortable with any kind of virtualization?

Hello wpeckham, thank you for your reply.

Am interested in desktop use, expect general user capability, would say 'not' comfortable with virtualization as not sure what you're talking about.

Newbie, huh!

In that case I can recommend that you go with one of the desktop focused distributions.
MoonOS or Ubuntu, Fedora or RedHat, and Mint come immediately to mind. They have excellent desktops and simple/fast install with excellent defaults.

Others like Gentoo or Debian make wonderful desktops (and/or servers), but you have to make the right choices, whereas with the ones I recommended the right choices are pretty much the defaults.

Minimal distributions such as DSL are always on option, and require less drive space and run faster. Minimal distributions, however, must compromise in their selections of kernel, libraries, and applications to meet that 'minimal' goal: as a result they do not provide a representative experience.

You may want to google for comparisons of distributions and/or desktops. For example the default for most will be GNOME or KDE, but there are versions of many that are based upon other desktop environments (or window managers) such as XFCE, FLUXBOX, OPENBOX, or other lighter options. KDE and GNOME are pretty standard, but tend to be larger and slower than the other options. I recommend that you start with the standard/default and only consider moving to a more efficient option later if that interests you.

The package managers used by these distributions make adding or updating packages easy, something that may be important to a new user. If you do not find the application you want on your system, the odds are excellent that it is available with only a few clicks and will be automatically loaded and configured by the package manager. This convenience may be critical to both your initial experience and reducing wasted time trying to 'find' applications you need/want to test.

Please, do not forget to bring any questions or problems back to the forums: someone will be glad to help and your experience may help and guide others. I would like to learn what choices you make, and how you view your experience as you progress.

Good luck!