what version of linux would anyone recommend,any help

For starters i recommend ubuntu or mandriva free.

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That really depends on your individual needs, whether you want to run linux as a serious alternative to windows or just something to tinker with and learn.

Ubuntu (and infact [most] debian based distros) are fantastic, most with different targets though, if I were to go through this again and i had a somewhat decent pc I'd just download a few distros and try them all in VMWare before installing to the HD, none of the hardware issues and it will give you a taste.

If you don't have a fairly fast pc you may consider live cd's as you will be able to try before you install any specific distro to see what suites you. It will still be slow compared to an installation but it will put much less strain on the PC than VMWare.

People can recommend whatever they want, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

With that said, i highly recommend trying DesktopBSD as well as linux.

There are a lot of resources for linux/bsd newbies now, take advantage of them and don't shy away from the command line too much.

Just my 2 cents.

Personally, for starters, i Recommend Ubuntu because it's get a great support community (a ton of information in the forums and on the wiki), they update it pretty often and they have some stuff built-in that makes linux pretty easy (probably easier than it should be).