hi I know nothing at all about linux except its free

My main reason for considering using linux is the possibilty of it being safer for web browsing , ive been scared witless by reports of DOS attacks trojans and hacking, so is linux safer ?

can i use a dual boot system i.e. windows and linux ?

are all websites supported ?

please can you recommend which version for a newbie

thanks

Welcome to LQ.

The security architecture in linux is very secure in general.

You should have no problems accessing all websites except ones which have been badly designed but this is the case with any OS.

You can dual boot with an existing operating system. For a first time user Mandrake is probably a good choice and it will also help you set up the dual boot if you need to resize partitions. If you are looking for somewhere to download from checkout:
http://www.lqiso.org

If you have the disk space, dual booting is no problem. You'll need to re-partition your hard disk however. If you do a little searching around here you'll find loads of advice on how to partition, what programs to use and how to set up dual booting. Lots of people do this successfully.

Pretty much. There are IE specific web sites out there and if you really need to use IE there are probably ways, but I'd say for 99% of what I do, Firefox is more than adequate. Even for those sites that claim to require IE.

If you haven't already, visit distrowatch.com and have a read. There are a couple of distros aimed at Windows users who want to make the siwtch. Around here it seems Mandrake has a good reputation as a solid first distro although you'll find advocates of several others such as Unbuntu, Mepis or Xandros.

Of course if you just want to try Linux pretty painlessly to see if you like it, burn a Knoppix CD. It is a complete distro on a CD. If you boot your computer from CD it will load and run without touching your hard drive. Even if you do install on your hard drive, having a Knoppix CD laying around is a pretty good idea.

Most of the high-profile security problems occur because Windows has design faults that no other system has, so yes, switching to another system means that many kinds of attack just won't work.

The worst design flaws are in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Outlook, so switching to another web browser (like Firefox) and another mail program (like Thunderbird) will make a Windows system much safer. Microsoft have also fixed several issues with Service Pack 2. You would still need to run anti-spyware and anti-virus software to make a Windows system actually safe.

Any up-to-date Linux distribution will include Firefox, Thunderbird, a built-in firewall and will not have the design faults that make Windows so exposed. You also need to consider that Linux can only run Windows programs by using extra compatibility software, so if you need to run a specific piece of software you may have to dual-boot to be able to keep using it.

Firefox is compatible with all correctly written sites, and most badly-written ones too. Some Websites are designed to automatically reject any software other than Internet Explorer, and there is no cure for stupidity...

You can dual-boot Windows and Linux - this is quite common.

For a completely new user I would probably recommend SUSE or Fedora. Both are high-quality and mostly problem free with a large community of users that can help you. The SUSE boxed set includes good manuals, there are many third-party books written for Fedora (which all include discs of Fedora itself).

thanks for the welcome

Is linux command prompt driven like the old ms-dos or is it more like the usual windows environment ?
also if a file is downloaded using linux to a formatted partition can windows also see and use the same file

The command prompt is similar to DOS but a "lot" more powerful. Desktop interfaces such as gnome and kde are graphical like a windows desktop, but again, they have many more features.

They could see the files but in order to share, read/write, files you would be better to create an extra fat32/vfat partition to store your files on.