I am wanting to download Linux to put on a computer that I have just to play around with it. But what I am struggling with the most is finding the right one to download. It will be a stand alone operating system so I want it to have a GUI. Anyone have any suggestions.

Try the search feature or just browse these very forums for the dozens of "Waz teh best l00nix" threads?

I recommend using search also - but if you're very new to linux I'd give Ubuntu a try first.

Defiantly go Gentoo..easiest of them all.

I agree with LNCPapa: If you don't know where to start, get Ubuntu. Boot from the CD, and give a first try. Then, if you like it, click the "Install" icon, and Ubuntu will install to your harddisk.

I'm currently running it on a Dell Latitude D820 laptop, and it works great!

Ubuntu for desktop, Fedora Core for server.

Hehe, yeah defiantly the way to go. [/kidding] That was actually how I learned to use Linux though. A new computer and a Gentoo min. install disk.

Like Phantasm said, Ubuntu or Fedora. I would actually recommend Fedora for a desktop though. I have FC6 right now and it runs better than any of my Ubuntu installs ever had.

Fedora has always been my favourate.

Now-a-days, I run Fedora in a VMware virtual machine, under Vista. I don't install any GUI stuff in the Fedora VM, just basic shell, perl, kernel, various useful tools, etc. Selective pruning with yum afterwards cut everything down to a sub 1.5GB size, so that VM is small enough to carry around on a USB stick, and runs fine from within a trueCrypt volume ( www.truecrypt.com ) . I then access the VM by making an ssh connection using putty, file system is accessed in Explorer just using samba to share linux directories. You can then get the desktop experience of vista but get the goodness of Linux, running inside a sandbox.

I recommend Ubuntu. You can boot from the downloaded CD to see if you like it, and if you do that it has an easy installer just the windows.