Which distribution should you get?
Hmm. Depends...
If you're comfortable with Windows, Ubuntu may be a good choice. It is well supported and the initial installation is done with a straight-forward GUI interface.
If, on the hand, you want to learn Linux, well, that's a different kettle of fish.
It might be a good idea to go to
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major. The link will take you to the
Top Ten Distributions page and you should read and consider everything on the page, distribution by distribution, and see what sounds the best to you.
I can highly recommend Slackware (it is the only distribution I use) for reliability, flexibility, dependability and... did I mention reliability? Oh, yes, I did. I will tell you, right up front, that Slackware has a kind of a learning curve -- it'll take some reading and trying and thinking about things but you will learn Linux and you'll have a platform that will be rock solid for a long time.
Those are, pretty much, the two extremes and because Linux is all about choice it's up to you what to choose. You can download a large number of distributions from the Downloads link to the right of this page (near the top) and try them (do that one at a time, though). It's easy enough to simply load a Linux distribution, try it, and blow it away to try another until you get one that fits your needs. You will probably lose Windows in the process unless you choose to repartition your disk drive so you can install Linux as a dual-boot; if you really do not care about Windows, just install Linux (Windows will go to the Great Byte Bucket in the Sky).
Anyway, welcome to LQ, hope you enjoy your time here and feel free to ask questions if you get stuck on something and need a little nudge in the right direction.
Hope this helps some.
