Lets talk Unix first.... Unix was written in the late 1960's. as one of the first operating systems. It was written in the days when bearded sandle-wearing blokes wrote programs and took it in turns to run them on a big expensive computers. Two such blokes wanted to use the computer at the same time so they wrote an 'operating system' so the applicaitons would talk to the operating system and the operating would talk to the hardware on behalf of the applications. This was all done by typing commands at a command prompt. There were no Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for a long time. This was Unix. There was only Unix for a very long time. Bearded people did well. Users did not exist.
Bill wrote Windows which took the latest graphical front-end of Unix and added more fancy graphical stuff. He was very good at it. It looked pretty. It ran on cheap hardware. Businesses bought them for word processing and the like.
Unix was still running on HUGE expensive hardware and would be used in a computer room running demanding applications. It was like this for a long time. In a lot on companies, it still is. Windows on the desktop and Unix running the critical applications on big fast computers.
Over the years bits of the Uinux source code have been made public while other bits have been owned by various companies. A clever chap called Linus filled in the gaps and made is own version of Unix called Linux. Some people will argue until the cows come home that LINUX IS NOT UNIX but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Linus was a nice chap and decided that anyone can use linux free of charge and have the source code if they want.
Lots of other people have taken what Linus did and re-written/customised it the way they like and then released their own version (called a flavour). A key factor in the proliferation of Linux is that it will run on cheap hardware (desktop PCs) and computing students/geeks stay up far too late making it more user friendly - with nice Graphical User Interfaces and trying to get everything that works just fine on Windows to work on Linux so they can say Linux is just as good.
Bottom line is - If you want to use a computer for home use (surfing, games, office apps, etc) on a home computer then go for Windows. You will have to pay for an easy life though. Microsoft don't do it for free!
If you like messing about with more complex stuff and playing with the computer is more about 'getting stuff to work' and you like the idea of it being free, then go for Linux. Installing Linux versions (like ubuntu) is easy and will give you a lovely graphical user interface. Surfing the net will work, it comes with a free office applications, some games etc... It won't run any of your Windows programs (exe's). As for the display, Linux is based on Unix which is a command line operating system with a bolt-on GUI so as far as displays go - you can choose! There are loads! Most of them are similar enough to the Windows GUI that a WIndows user has no problems.
I ought to mention that as well as Unix/Linux going into the desktop market, Windows is also in the Server (computer room) market and doing well.
I'm a Unix/Linux trainer and I spend most weeks teaching people how to manage the great big expensive Unix computers their companies have bought. I spend all week typing in complicated commands and don't see a GUI all week *BUT* I run Windows on my laptop, and the family computer at home. I love all my Windows programs and nothing beats Microsoft Office.
Neither is *best* it all depends what you want to do! I would recommend you try one of the 'live' Linux versions. Download and burn one onto a DVD and boot your computer fromit.You will have Linux running but it won't overwrite or damage anything on your hard disk. When you have had enough playing, just shut down, take the dvd out and boot up into Windows again.
Another way to have the best of both worlds is to install VMWare Workstation on your current Windows OS. This allows you to install another OS in a window!.
A lot of computer magazine cover-disks have a linux live-cd on them.
Blimey, that was a bit of a rant wasn't it!