Linux is a free computer operating system. Linux is the favorite computer platform for bioinformatics research.
One popular distribution of Linux is Ubuntu. Ubuntu can be easily installed into Windows using the Wubi installer. The default Ubuntu installation does not contain the GNU compiler and many programming libraries, which can be very frustrating to new users. These can be installed by "sudo apt-get". If you want to use GNU compiler right away after Linux installation, you should consider to use the Fedora distribution of Linux.
Alternatively, you can install cygwin, an emulated Linux under Windows system.
It is useful to customize your working directory under Linux, which can be done by modifying the '.bashrc' file in your home directory.
For students, if you want to succeed in genomics research, learn Linux!
Linux tutorials
Linux administration