text: Ubuntu is a great way to go. It is free, and they will even send you free CD's if you can't download it for some reason (if you are asking a question here, I assume you are already online). For me, the best part of Ubuntu is the community. There is a great community of people from around the world, that are very polite and always happy to help answer any questions that you may have: http://www.ubuntuforums.org\n\nEven though Ubuntu is currently on version 5.1 (Breezy Badger), http://ubuntuguide.org which was written for version 5.04 (Warty Warthog), is still a great guide that is very helpful as well.\n\nThe Synaptic Package Manager makes it VERY easy to install additional programs, and most of them are free.\n\nThere is a live CD (which runs from the CD), if you would like to try it without having to install it to your hard drive first:\nhttp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/5.10/\n\nGive it a try, I am sure that you will like it. I installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot about 5 months ago, and I finally removed Windows about two months ago. I am here to stay.