I'm not too experienced with linux (been a windows user for as long as I can remember) but my first foray into the world of *nix is Fedora 23 on my 1.76 firmware PS4.

Talk about getting thrown in the deep end! It's a very steep learning curve coming from Windows and it's required many many hours trawling forums and tech blogs. I enjoy tinkering with electronic devices so I haven't become frustrated enough to rage-quit thus far.

If you're the type of person who like things to "just work" out of the box, Linux won't be for you, but if you see obstacles as a challenge to overcome and don't mind spending an hour or two in a command-line terminal, I think you'll find Linux quite rewarding once you get it working sweet.

 

Basically every Linux Distro with a ready to use desktop enviroment. Like Ubunut, Mint and such. The main difference between them are these desktop enviroment since Mint is a derivate of Ubuntu and Ubunut is a derivate of Debian . However the nice thing about Linux is that you can use whatever desktop enviroment you want to name a few KDE, Gnome, Unity (its what Ubuntu uses).
Here is a list with more https://www.linux.com/news/best-linux-desktop-environments-2016

 

Anything on https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major save for arch linux* and a copy of https://xkcd.com/627/
Assuming you have a machine of modest power (core2 and 4 gigs of RAM is plenty) then stick it inside a virtual machine https://www.virtualbox.org/
If you are using an odd distro with virtualbox then pick whatever you recognise when it gives you the premade setup choices (usually ubuntu) as it should do just as well.

*if you are ultimately intending to know it all and set up servers then arch is great but if you just want click around a UI before diving right in then don't. You can follow a guide and have to know nothing but why have the hassle. Equally there are probably big distros out there which that link does not cover, and most people would have no clue what mageia is and probably only have used slackware if they were doing stuff way back when, but hey.

Once you have the VM then read what you are doing at each step (it should all be on the screen) and use the logic of the comic above. About the only thing I will say is everything on linux goes through the file system. Visit the /proc directory and see some files -> they are files but they are actually files representing the processes running on your machine. We could cover what each does but for normal users on a machine (and unlike windows' "make everybody an administrator" approach to life you do spend most of your time as a normal user) your files are usually stored in /home/username. In the command line this is given the symbol # so you can type cd # and it will change to it for the user you are logged into. There is more to the command line and it is very powerful but you can probably avoid using it really if you want. Likewise there are other little things like file ownership and marking (chown and chmod respectively) but don't worry so much about those for now, they are however of major importance in servers and the like.

Other than that just play. If you are on an old laptop or something you gave to the task, or a virtual machine there is nothing you can do which will mess things up beyond deleting files on your network shares or something like that.

 

There's nothing stopping you from trying out multiple distros and seeing which you prefer, because in the end, the choice comes down to a matter of personal preference. Ubuntu and Mint are the two most popular distros, so you should probably start there. Both are also as noob-friendly as a Linux distro is going to be.

For various reasons I'm not going to get into right now, it's also worth keeping in mind that a lot of people who try Linux eventually go back to Windows as their primary OS. There's no shame in this, and like I said earlier, it's all a matter of personal preference.

 

Coming from a guy who's installed far too many distros I would suggest..
Pearl; Practically OS X without the Hackintosh (and without the .applescript support)
Lubuntu; Light af, and is really easy to adapt to if you're used to Windows

..And literally everything Crystal recommended

 

As has been recommended before, Linux Mint is a great introduction to Linux. However, I would also recommend Antergos if you want something a bit more customization. It's like Arch, but with an easy to use installer.

 

I've honestly had nothing but trouble with Manjaro, but it might have been weird stuff with my hardware.

 

Manjaro/antergos is simplified arch or more beginer friendly

 

Well, there's really no simple answer to that question, at least not that friendly.

As example, on windows everything runs off an .exe file, like an installer, on linux distribution, sometimes you will have to turn to terminal or downloading packages trough APT, i can recommend you a lot of distros, but at the end you will be the one to decide, even 1 Linux distribution will have several variants, take mint for example, having Cinammon And Matter, so, cinnamon its based on Gnome3 tending to be more graphical exhaust, you can take Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Puppy Linux, DSL, among others, also if you don't feel that confident leaving the windows area, you can go use Ylmf OS [StartOs]:


I use Mint, just for fun, nothing serious, as well as some other private distros ;D

 

Personally I like ubuntu mate. During the installation it allows you to get the non open source drivers for your pc.
This way instead of looking for a generic wifi driver or whatever driver. You will have the correct driver for your device.
Mate is very lightweight and seems for function very well on a laptop. One of the things that I hate about current linux distros is the removal of package manager. (it can be downloaded but That's what I prefer to use to download packages)
If you are looking for an easy to install distro do not get arch or debian.