[ThunderSleeps]

Linux Mint is one of the more user-friendly and "new to Linux friendly" distros. It is available with several different desktop environments. I would recommend Cinnamon as that should be familiar to a windows user.

Even better, you can download the ISO file and use any number of utilities to install that onto a thumb drive creating a bootable thumb drive. Then if your BIOS is correctly configured (or you hit the right magic key combo on startup) you can boot from the thumb drive and try out Linux without committing to an install. Of course it will be a little slow running from the thumb drive, but you'll get to try it out.

[trebb]

I appreciate it - been hearing that Mint and Ubuntu are the most likely to be user friendly and that Mint is tops there.

I have a Win 7 machine with one of the "newer" bios setups and had trouble getting a Mint CD to load up to test it. - any hints on the "magic key combination?