Im looking to get Linux and start learning it. What would you recommend, REDHAT, SOMETHING else? Should I buy a copy or download it from somewhere?

I recommend visiting a variety of Linux forums (linuxquestions.org is pretty good) and starting out by downloading a few live CDs and using them. Knoppix, Kanotix, and Ubuntu would be a good start. I strongly recommend Kanotix for installation to hard disk and as a very useful live CD. http://www.canadiancontent.net/tech/computing/installing-linux/ Since the internet is you best resource for teaching yourself about Linux, if you can have two computers available that would help greatly. Surf for info on one while using Linux on the other. If you only have one monitor, a cheap KVM switch (I like Trendnet) will let you easily swap back and forth between PCs.

For beginners, Fedora ( http://fedora.redhat.com -- sponsored by RedHat, the commercial one named RedHat Enterprise Desktop), OpenSuse ( http://www.opensuse.org -- sponsored by Novell, commercial one named Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop) and Ubuntu ( http://www.ubuntu.com ) are very suitable. Those three are the most polished linux distros. For my taste, Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop is the most polished, user-friendliest, and most complete distro for end-user. You must pay for it though...

For a starter, i would like to first ask what your interest in linux is. Are you interested in it as a server, as a desktop or just a learning tool. For a server, I believe Redhat, Fedora, Centos are good startup points. For a desktop, I would prefer you try using Suse, Mandrake, Ubuntu. Also note that the ones specified for server work justas well. However, for Ubuntu, though easy to use, you cannot customize most of the features. For learning purposes, i propose you use a command line interface. Most suitable for this would be Redhat, Suse, Mandrake and Centos. please visit ma website. Check out for more websites by me soon. www.visitkenyasafaris.com is the place to be. Be there. Please give your feedback about this site and any other tutorials you ma

I would like to learn more about it so I would be able to use it in the job market. I would also like to build a WEB, FTP server so I could migrate those two things off my Windows Server.

Download a few of the most popular distros and find one that you are comfortable with. Once you have got the hang of what's what then I would then suggest purchasing an official release of a distro as they are still pretty cheap and often come with loads of great documentation and books to help you learn. http://www.linuxiso.org/ http://www.distrowatch.com/