One good reason to stick with Ubuntu( or Mint-which is essentially Ubuntu with few items different) is the availability of drivers. If you are using any hardware from known makers like dell,HP etc. chances are, you will see it working fine right out of the box. For example I have a all-in-one from HP it has drivers already available. Same way I have a USB wireless network adapter and it worked just fine. You can run the LiveCD make sure your system runs as it should and then dual boot or virtualize.If you are windows user and start with idea of learning the hard way, you may not take a full dive at all. I have been using Ubuntu almost for 2 years and still consider myself a newbie as I dont know how to do many things still.
You could try Ubuntu-GNOME for best driver support or Mint Linux GNOME