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How do I establish a linux operatings system that would be similar to windows? Linux is free right. So if I have to buy a new hardrive, I won't need windows which is expensive. But how do I know which I should use. There seems to be many different linux operating system.

Welcome lazlina

You are right - Linux is free!
And there are a lot of choices. but i think there are about 3 distros for you to choose from:

Linux Mint Xfce

You can click here to download it

Zorin will let you change the layout to Win XP or Win 7 with the click of a button. So it will look exactly like you are used to.

You can download it here

Mageia
You can download it here

I have provided links to the 32 bit versions - If you are not sure if you need 32 bit or 64 bit versions - then you can simply click on the links I have provided here.

If you need the 64 bit versions just go to the webpage and download it from there.

Other Linux version that you can use are:
Manjaro - it still is a fairly new distro. and has the same installer as Mint. It will probably be the fastest distro and have the newest software. It also comes with steam. And it looks good but not exactly like windows:


You can download it here

If you have a Windows system today then you can use cdburner (it is free) to burn the downloaded iso files to the DVD.

After that you simply start your computer with the DVD in it and you can install Linux to your new hard drive from there.

Let us know what you picked and if you are stuck feel free to ask - remember:

There are no bad questions - only bad answers
(Moving this to Linux education)

What I recommend as well for people to do (in order to remain unbiased and make sure the person asking is getting what they want, and not what I want them to), is go here, check them out, find one that seems to suit you, download the live cd of it and run it off the cd to be sure it's the distro you want.