Tootler, you say ...Have you considered setting your computer up to dual boot?...

I tried that once with a separate hard drive for Linux. It installed fine but wiped out my C drive in the process.

Modern Linuxes are pretty good in that respect. When I started, I used Ubuntu and during the installation you got the option of partitioning the hard drive and leaving Windows in place, which I did and everything went fine. It still pays to back up your C drive in its entirety, though in case anything goes wrong. Nothing is perfect.

Ubuntu also have a system called "Wubi" which sets your Ubuntu up as a program within the C drive. I tried it that way to start with and it went fine.

I now use Linux Mint as Ubuntu messed around with the desktop and I didn't like what they had done. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and is, if anything, better for a newcomer as the main menu is where someone coming from Windows would expect it to be. I installed a "lite" version of Linux Mint on my old computer for a friend of my wife and it worked fine. There are many versions of Linux and as the previous post says, distrowatch is a good place to start. Most Linuxes come as downloads which you put on a bootable CD or USB stick to test and install.