What is a good version to start with?

Have a look here: http://distrowatch.com/

For the beginning, choose a beginner friendly distro like Mint, Ubuntu, Opensuse.

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You might also consider looking at the "sticky" at the top of this forum called "Newbie alert: 50 Open Source Replacements for Windows XP".

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If you plan to continue using eCS and want to use it on the same PC as Linux, it's more complicated with some distros than others. HPFS filesystem support is a kernel compilation option that historically has been disabled in some distros and enabled in others.

Along with its popularity among OS/2 users frequenting the newsgroups many moons ago, whether that option is enabled by default was one of the factors that originally led me to select SUSE before it became FOSS, and continue with openSUSE as preferred distro afterward. With distros that do not enable HPFS support one must recompile the kernel with that option enabled.

No distro I'm aware of will provide automatic access to either HPFS or OS/2 LVM, assuming HPFS (at least) is not HPFS whenever a type 07 partition is found. HPFS is accessible via manual configuration if the kernel has support enabled. I know OS/2 LVM and Linux LVM are different, but as I've never used either, I don't know whether OS/2 LVM might pose a similar impediment.

Probably more important in distro selection is first finding out which DE(s) might be most compatible with the way you're used to working. I picked KDE3 early on, and it's still my preference, with TDE (a KDE3 fork) a close second. Desire for particular DE(s) will narrow the field of candidates.

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If you use the LQ search to look for threads asking what is a good starter distro, you will find as many opinions a posters.

I recommend buring Live CDs of distros you are interested in and booting from them. Then pick the one that makes the best first impression.

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Hi Ralph; Welcome to LQ!!! Tell us a tiny bit about the PC you will use.

Have you heard of VirtualBox.org? It's a simple&quick way to try Linux
(as easy as running a PC 'app", maybe with osboxes.org)

Anyway, let us know... Bye for now.

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Check out mint linux. I'd highly recommend it for beginner.

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Two distros using different GUIs can look and feel like different operating systems. Every distro has its default: the one the developers use, where the bugs are few and quickly squashed. Some good beginner's distros for specific GUIs are
KDE (full of eye-candy and very configurable): PCLinuxOS, OpenSUSE
Mate and Cinnamon (plain and fancy respectively, both middle-of-the-road): Mint
Xfce (old-school and reliable): Salix, Manjaro
Gnome (make your desktop look like a tablet!): Ubuntu
Budgie: Solus (I don't know this, but a lot of people like it and it comes from Ireland, so it must be good!)