TRY LINUX. TRY WITHOUT INSTALLING IT. TRY BY INSTALLING IT WITH MS WINDOWS. There are more than 300 active Linux Distros. For someone new to Linux, selection of one can be a daunting task. My personal shortlist for those new to Linux: You can just boot with the Live CDs and check before you decide to install. UbuntuIt is a sponsored distro with good forum support. One of the easiest to use. Opensuse - Another nice one SimplyMepis - One more aptosid - spelt with small (lower-case) 'a'. aptosid is bleeding-edge, has the finest manual I have ever seen, and excellent forum support. It is real fast. Try it after you have some experience. PUPPY - Puppy is run in Live-CD mode. It is a very small, yet very capable distro. It does not take much time to learn. Here on this page we have made short notes on how to download iso files and burn them to CDs. Choose a distribution which can be run Live, run it live and experience Linux before installing it. Please note that Live Cds demand more RAM and are slower than installed OS. Puppy will run with 128 MB RAM and others shall need 512 MB or more RAM. All these CD can be run Live, and the same CDs can used for installtion. There is a small section on partitioning if you want to install any Linux. Linux can be installed with Microsoft Windows and you can choose your OS at start-up.
DEBIAN and Debian based Linux Distros -
Debian	One of the most stable OS, Live-cum-Install CD	http://www.debian.org/
Ubuntu	Debian based - Currently the No.1 Distro	http://ubuntu.com
Knoppix	Great hardware detection, Live CD/DVD	http://www.knoppix.org/
SimplyMepis	Debian based, A Great Desktop CD	http://www.mepis.org/
Linuxmint	Ubuntu based - The Better Ubuntu	http://www.linuxmint.com
aptosid	Fast Debian, real fast ,rolling distro, bleeding edge	http://www.aptosid.com
SWITHOVER TO LINUX
It starts with Getting Linux. Next you run the Live CD. If you like it
Making Your Own Live Cd
To make your own Live CD (or Live-cum-Install CD) you have to download the .iso file. iso files are generally large files, most Linux iso files are of 700 MB size for CDs (the DVD files can be 4 GB). They are best downloaded using torrents, most distros provide the corresponding torrent files which are about 20 to 30 KB in size. A torrent client (as Bittorrent in Windows) is installed first and then the torrent file is opened in it. The torrent client then downloads the iso file. You can pause and interrupt the download without losing the downloaded data. For direct iso download use a good download manager. At 16 kByte/sec (128 kbit/ses) you get 50 MB in an hour. The iso image is then burned using the 'burn image' command (no data CD or boot CD), I have used InfraRecorder (a free image burner for Windows. Some reccommend slow burning speed of 4X or 8X. Many Cds end up as coasters when the iso is not correct or proper image burning procedure is not followed. 1) Download and Install BitTorrent OR utorrent http://www.bittorrent.com/download http://www.utorrent.com/ 2) Download and install any iso burner as InfraRecorder OR burncdcc in Windows. http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/ http://burncdcc.en.softonic.com/ You can use K3B in Ubuntu, if you do no have it, you can install it using add/remove. 3) Download the torrent file for the iso The torrent file will have a .torrent extension and shall be a small file, say 25 KB. Click on the torrent file, you can use the link given here. You can save it or just open it. Open the torrent file in your BitTorrent client. Download shall start. It can take quite a few hours depending on your download speed. 4) Burning the iso to CD When the download is complete, insert a blank CD into your CD writer. Open you CD burner, click on 'burn image' command and select the iso file (not the torrent file). Do not unzip the iso file. Do not burn as Data CD. Do not burn as bootable CD. Do nothing else. Set speed to AUTO . Keep verification enabled. Do not set high manual speed (Mxm. 8X). Burn in DAO mode..
Running the Live CD
Place the CD in the CD drive and restart your machine. Go to your BIOS to make sure that your 1st boot is from the CD. Most computers use the 'DEL' key to enter BIOS, but see at the bottom of the page after power up tp know your key, it is 'F2' in my desktop. Press the key to go to BIOS. Select CD Drive as first boot and save. Once your PC boots up from CD you will see different options. Running a CD live will not affect your hard disk. Live CDs normally run much slower that installed OS, but some distros are designed to run as Live CD.
Partitions - Applies to all Linux distributions.
Please take a little time to understand about partitions before you install Linux. Linux needs at least two partitions, one root parttition marked as /, and a SWAP partition (optional in some distros) that is used somewhat as RAM. All program and data files reside in root, data in /home/<user> which normally resides in root unless you make a separate /home partition. The / partition contains the kernels and the system files. It also contains the added program files. . A better and strongly recommended way is to have at least 3 partitions 6 GB to 12 GB for /root (minimum 4 GB) in ext3 format,(ext4 is replacing ex3) 1-2 GB for SWAP (minimum 512MB reccommended) and rest as /data, ext3 format. The /data partion shall contain all your data and you can reinstall OS (or install some other OS easily if and when needed. MS Windows will not be able to access your ext3 partition without additional drivers installed in it. So if you have Windows and want to access your data from it, format it as NTFS (or FAT32). Linux will read write FAT32 partitions with no problems. And Ntfs-3g in Linux can make Linux access NTFS formatted partitions. If you have Microsoft Windows and want to retain it, let it reside, use the rest of the space for Linux and any other data partitions. You will be able to use both Linux and Windows, obviously one at a time. This gives you the chance to use and evaluate Linux and use any program in Windows that has no suitable substitute in Linux. You can use any partition you have or you can resize any partition to free up space. You resize to create more partitions. If you are going to install both Microsoft Windows and Linux, install Microsoft Windows first. If you resize any Windows partition with data and do not want to delete the data (or program files too as in case you have just one partition and have Windows on it), you have to defragment the partition in Windows first so that all files go to the beginning of the partition. If your RAM is less than 512MB, it is advisable to make the SWAP partition first before running the Live CD. You can download Partedmagic, burn its image to a CD, boot with it and edit partitions. http://partedmagic.com/ The Live-cum-installation CDs come with partition editors that are used during installation.So actually you do not have to burn a CD for partitions. It is strongly recommended to backup all your important data before partitioning or installation.
Useful Links
Partitioning HDD with GParted		http://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted
Help from Ubuntu Community (Guide)		https://help.ubuntu.com/community
Lessons in Linux		http://www.linux.org/lessons/
Migrating to Linux, info on distros, packages		http://linuxmigration.tk/
Reading material on Ubuntu		http://librenix.com/?page=Ubuntu
The Linux Kernel		http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/tlk.html
Linux Kernel Newbies		http://kernelnewbies.org/
The Linux Cook Book		http://dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_toc.html
ext2fs driver to read/write ext2/ext3 from MS Windows		http://www.fs-driver.org/
Read Write NTFS Driver to read & write from Linux		http://dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_toc.html
How To Enable NTFS Write Support (ntfs-3g) On Ubuntu Feisty		http://www.howtoforge.com/ntfs_3g_ubuntu_feisty
This site has Links to a few online books		http://www.linux-books.us/linux_general.php
Open Office is available for Windows too.		http://www.openoffice.org
Plug in for MS Office to read odf (open document format)		http://www.sun.com/software/star/openoffice/
Plug in for MS Office to read odf from Microsoft		http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/
CHM viewers for Gnome and KDE		http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/open-chm-file-under-linuxfreebsd/
Free Linux Programming Books.		http://www.techbooksforfree.com/linux.shtml
GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide		http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/