I'm thinking about making the switch from Windows but I kind of dread the learning curve. Do you think Ubuntu is the best for a noob? I hear Mint is pretty good too. There are so many different Linux flavors out there, I'm paralyzed by indecision.

IMO Linux today is easier to load and use than Windows. IMO you would likely be best giving Linux Mint a try. I find Mint 17.3 Cinnamon to be a superb release, which is a long term release ... supported with updates for about 3 years or so. See >>> http://www.linuxmint.com/

I am going to download it when I get a chance. I think I might try it out on an old computer and get the hang of it before switching over completely. It's just hard to find the time to deal with it. I really do think I will like it better once I get an understanding of the basics.

I read that you can install something (Wine?) on Linux that will allow you to run Windows programs. I don't really have a huge number of programs that I use but it would be pretty cool if I could continue using those few. Have you tried that?

I think once you get the hang of using Mint you'll really like it. I use the Mint 17.3 Cinnamon release. It has a very nice menuing system. Something nice is Mint is very very stable. It just works extremely well. It has to do with the internals and how files are executed vs. Windows. That's a good idea to try it out on another system first.

Here's the link for https://www.winehq.org/

Let me know if you run into problems. I can probably help you some.

much and it's far easier than trying to download the OS IMO.

I may not even tackle this for a few months, but I will probably pester you with questions when I do.

moving from Windows, I think you'll find it very intuitive for the most part. Yep, whenever, if you have a question just let me know.

because I was getting notifications from Google that Google Chrome would not longer be receiving updates for Precise In march. I've been extremely impressed with release 17.3. It's also an LTS release, but it seems only for 3 years.