yarrrgh... (updated)

so, i'll be out of commission for awhile... my computer is currently hating life (windows won't load, which makes anything else a bit tricky). i can use the family computer (which i'm doing now), but since that's shared, i'll be spending much less time online.

on those notes, how tricky is linux to pick up? and if i decide to switch to that, will i have many compatibility issues?

--update--
well, i feel stupid. i called a friend of mine who's fairly good with computers, and when i turned my computer back on (this is after it had been restarted at least dozens of times) so i could tell him what the problem was, everything worked just fine. so for now, my goal is to not turn my computer off, ever again, unless absolutely necessary.