I have no clue about Linux so I have to stick with Windows.
Tux. The Linux mascotte.
I saw this a while ago:
"I have no clue about Linux so I have to stick with Windows."
No, you don't. Why not? The short version: get a clue about Linux. Of course, this is very short. Allow me to dispel a few myths about Linux.
Linux is difficult. You have to be a tech geek who can type in all those things like "ls -1 | grep *#@) | awk -F\ '{print $5}' > /dev/null" and understand what it means.
Yes, absolutely true some 15 years ago. Back then you needed something like that. Today however you pop a CD or DVD in your computer (or a bootable USB stick), boot from it and you're presented with something like:
(You can click the image for a larger version.) For ease of use I keep referring to Ubuntu as that is what I use, but the same thing happens for Fedora, Mint and a lot of other versions of Linux.
Yes, you can actually "Try" the system. Click Try Ubuntu (yes, really, just click, not type in some complicated command!) and a complete Linux system will load. And the best part: it won't affect anything on your computer. Of course it will be slower than from a hard disk - it runs from CD/DVD.
After booting the disc, you can see something like this:
"Can?" Yes. Linux offers you several interfaces, you can use whichever you like best. Up here is the new GNOME interface showing some of the applications that are installed. Have we typed in anything like "ls -1 | grep *#@) | awk -F\ '{print $5}' > /dev/null" yet?
But nothing runs in Linux! I need my almost-official version of MS Office 2012 that someone else bought, and Firefox, and MS-outlook!
There is a HOST of software available for Linux. If you like Firefox, you can run Firefox in Linux. Or Google Chrome, or a few others. If you insist on Internet explorer... tough. That won't run in Linux. But then, we already determined that nothing runs in Linux.
For MS Office, you can go to LibreOffice (also runs in Windows and on Mac OS). It's free and works pretty well with MS Office documents. The same goes for OpenOffice. Or the AbiWord word processor and the Gnumeric spreadsheet.
To compete with Outlook we have Evolution, Kmail, Balsa, Aethera, Claws Mail or Sylpheed. And a bunch of others, but I won't bore you with endless lists of software. Especially Evolution will feel a lot like your home on the Outlook range. On LINUXRSP you can find an extensive list of software with Linux equivalents for Microsoft products.
There are no games for Linux. Well, not everything for windows exists in Linux, indeed. But there is http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/ and the Linux Game DataBase, to start with.
But my anti virus software won't run in Linux. True. I have to disappoint you there. The sad fact remains that for every 10,000 virusses in Windows there probably is 1 for Linux. I admit that Linux still has a long way to go here.
If you want to know more about the core of Linux, have a look at http://www.linux.org. Otherwise you can just grab one of the many free CD- or DVD-images, boot from it and play around with it a little without (or before) installing it.