In response to recent posts, I did not misread, I just didn't see any other information about security updates so I had assumed the rest were always free. I know the distros are free. I might start with Debian, and yes I would like to learn programming. Right now I do not know how to install Debian, and I don't know if I want to replace my win7 with Debian on my laptop or install it in virtualPC; I use my desktop for the real stuff, only using my laptop for talking to friends and going on the web.

I agree with a lot what is being said here.

“There is no free lunch” as the saying goes.

CentOS is a great destro which is based on Red Enterprise Linux. In fact it is Red Hat on steroids. The folks at CentOS have done a great job loading the destro up with lots of features and programs but it isn’t for a newbie…well maybe for an advance newbie.

Try OpenSuse first, all these destros are free so if you don’t like one or understand one you can always go to another one…what do you have to lose? None of this is windows.

The Gnome GUI is a more simple interface but you could always download KDE which is much more like Windows. KDE has had some of the wind taken out of it like there isn’t any interface to update the system where in previous releases of KDE there was.

Vaquh, I am fairly recent to Linux as well and also dabble with various programming languages. Linux is a good place to experiment with various Distributions. I perfer Linux Mint 11 as my main OS but have a couple of partitions on my HD and duel boot(Machine does not have the capabilities for Virtual Machine OS). I like to down load a distro to a flash drive and see how it performs for a while. Some may not even boot right, those you can discard. Some will 'feel' better to you than others. Start with a common distro(Ubutu/Mint/Fedora/etc) and then you can play with others as you come accross them. After seeing various Richard Stallman talks on Youtube you might feel compelled to try a Free Software Only distro. I tried a few and ended up liking Trisquel. Don't for get that each distro you can use various Desktop Environments(XFCE,LXDE,Gnome,Fluxbox,Openbox, or just a window manager for the ultimate in retro (wmii or i3)). That also is another journey to take when you ready to try something new. Have fun!