New Linux suggestions please

All I have ever used is windows. I want to play around with Linux. So I am going to partition a portion of my hard drive and add linux to it. Any thoughts on what version of Linux to get and how to start off?

You want to use some user-friendly distribution.. Choose from Mandriva, Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora.

Before actually installing anything you might want to try out some CD version first to get the feel of things. Knoppix is a CD-based Linux and you can get a SuSE LiveCD too.

Linux has two primary flavors: Client Desktop and Servers.

You can learn a lot on install/config of Linux using the Desktop system.
Information is in manpages eg try 'man man' on a command line instead of help.

scripting is fun and there are several 'script languages' to try; bash being most previlent today.

Email may be a shock for you; try Netscape as an email reader.

When I first wanted to get into linux I tried many flavors, Redhat 9, Slackware 10, Suse 7.1, Mandrake 9.1, Lindows and a few others. While that was a few years ago and things have changed. By far the easiest going install was Suse. Their YAST (yet another setup tool) utility in IMO is superior to the other distros.