What to do now?
 

Ok Guys and girls I am a 17 year old. I program for my school robotics team and I want to become a real one someday. I need to know the OS on linux so how should I go about doing that?

Install a linux distro, either as dual-boot or in VirtualBox. Use it, and read about it. There's loads of documentation out there.

You'll get better experience by insatlling it onto your hard drive instead of into a virtual machine because you'll learn about configuring hardware as well.

Start slowly, if you want to try out Linux and get a small grasp to the system you can do as said above and install a system through Virtual Box. You could also use a tool called wubi which will actually install Linux like a program in windows...allowing you to easily remove it. Beginning I would recommend using a distribution like Ubuntu which is quite user-friendly in most aspects. Once you get the basic ideas I would recommend building your own system from scratch..allowing you to learn exactly how Linux runs from the ground up. There are multiple distributions that are setup for just that. (Arch Linux, Gentoo, lfs(The best, but hardest way to learn)). and always remember that Google, forums, and documentation are your best friends.

The exact same way you learned Windows or Mac. Use it, read, expierement.

Skip the VM, create partitions, and install a Linux distro. Slackware would be a good learning choice, as would Linux From Scratch, Arch, or Gentoo.