I am really new to linux (computer ingeneral past surfing the web) i dont under stand the aconyms Is there a place online to read up on what all this crap means? also how would I go about loading linux on my computer. I am really interested in the open source idea( no copywrite stuff)I am learning alot about my computer ( mostly screwing it up its fun to figure out though( sometimes) any help to a computer illiterate would be appreciated

Not sure what kind of acronyms you're talking about, but I would just google the letter combination plus the word acronym (e.g. "cpu acronym"). Speaking of Google, learning to use it is the key to learning Linux, and lots of other things as well, I suppose.

As far as getting Linux installed is concerned, Check out DistroWatch.com, and the Distributions forum on this board. Please do not start a thread asking "which distro" you should use. There are plenty of those, all with the same answers.

If you're really interested in free (as in liberty) software, you might want to check out the FSF (Free Software Foundation) site. They recommend a distibution called gNewSense. I downloaded the LiveCD and tried it out. Worked real good on my laptop. Even found the Wireless card.

fedora has a jargon buster here, that'll help with some stuff, after that try googling them or dropping them into our wiki, hint its at the side of the screen under main menu

We need to be just a bit more specific with the questions..... One man's crap is another man's........
Seriously, there are several good ways to get started--magazines, ask questions here, buy a book, etc.
Give us an idea what you DO know, and we'll know better where to start. For example, have you installed Windows on a computer? Have you ever built, modified or repaired? Do you have any experience with DOS, Unix, or other command-line environments?

matt0474: One surprisingly good place to look up linux/unix terms is Wikipedia.

Examples:

hal: HAL is a Hardware Abstraction Layer and Open-source software Project that allows desktop applications on an operating system to readily access hardware information so that they can locate and use such hardware regardless of bus or device type...

ext3: ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journalled file system that is commonly used by the Linux operating system...

X: In computing, the X Window System (commonly X11 or X) is a networking and display protocol which provides windowing on bitmap displays...

lvm: LVM is an implementation of a logical volume manager for the Linux kernel...

newbie: A newbie is a newcomer to a particular field, the term being commonly used on the Internet, where it might refer to new, inexperienced, or ignorant users...

Googling the name of an acronym usually does the trick. Some bookstores actually have computer dictionaries filled with acronyms, although I've never used one.

One little problem is that the acronym doesn't always tell you what the program/item is (wine= wine is not an emulator...it allows you to run windows programs under Linux; the acronym is not very helpful). More googling will tell all.

And not to nitpick, but Linux is heavily copyrighted, via the General Public License. Fortunately that copyright gives the user a lot of privileges, like the right to view the source code, and the right to make copies.

http://www.acronymfinder.com/