You cant hack the whitehouse using microsux windozer.  It just aint secure and you cant do jack in it. Microsux windozer is definately one of the best disguised trojan horses I have seen (Icq however seems to also be an excellent plugin for this trojan. Ie. Dont install ICQ for windows.  It is NOT secure.) Linux is a more superior os to windows security wise but games will run slower on linux.. Although the new version of xfree86 which just came out now speeds up games.  Linux requires at least a gigabyte of memory on the harddisk to be able to truly take advantage of linux.  This memory cannot be shared with windows.  linux needs another partition.  Also, if you dont have a fast processor, you tend to have to wait for things to happen, like what happens in windows but the program loading is less obvious. linux is available in many distributions.  Each distribution is similar but the applications and programs are different in all of them.  The most popular distributions seems to be Redhat (probably one of the best), Mandrake linux (cheaper then redhat, considered to be enchanced redhat), slackware and Desbian linux.  I highly recommend to get these distributions as some that are released aren't very good.  You can download linux (500megs) for free (actually free, not illegal) but it is recommended to buy the distribution because, unlike in windows, it is extremely helpful to have a manual in linux.  Also, if asked in the installation if you want to start the computer in X-windows, I dont suggest you do because otherwise, if there is a problem, it is harder to fix.  Also, unlike windows, linux is secure.  You cant delete someones password file like you can in windows (you can delete the *.pwl to reset their password).  

In linux you have a supervisor  and normal users.  The normal users setup needs to be configured by the supervisor (the account name is always root) as the normal users dont get all the privilages.  I recommend that you dont use root often unless you dont mind reinstalling linux again as you can really screw up the OS.  The advantage to being a newbie in linux though is that you can easily reinstall linux because you wont have anything important.  During installation, if you are dualbooting your system with windows, you will be asked where you want lilo installed (or another boot manager).  If you install it in the Master boot record (MBR), YOU CAN'T USE A WINDOWS BOOTLOADER, like bootmagic as it screws up both partitions.  If you want to use a program like bootmagic, install it in the first sector of the second partition, your manual should tell you all of this!  I recommend during installation to install all the libaries as some programs need it.  I also suggest installing everything else as well to prevent difficuties later on.  I suggest that you print the commands.txt,directory lay out.txt and fileext.txt as they can be a big help (although you dont usually realise that straight away). They will help you effectively reduce the amount of time before you can actually use linux well. 

After installation is finished,log into root and if you chose not to load x-windows during start up, load it by typing startx.  It wont be too long until linux is a much more effective operating system for you to use for hacking.  Also, if you use an internal modem though (especially a LT winmodem), linux wont be able to be used to its full potential (but it does support most winmodems).  Also, to clear things up, linux, when using X-windows, is nearly as easy to use as Windows.  

If you want to run windoze stuff in linux, there are many good emulators available, such as Wine (helpful at porting windows apps to linux, also runs a vast amount of progs nowdays), VMware (best for games) and Win4Lin (best for apps).  Of course, you will need enough ram to be able to run them both.  While Windows progs (or windows 9X running from linux) will run slightly slower, if they crash you can easily close them.  Also, the slowdown in speed is negligible and in most cases, is barely noticeable (unless u got less then 128megs ram and a fast enough processor). 

BTW Internet Explorer wont work presently in Linux because it wasn't written for linux. Also, why would microsoft make something for linux???  They can't even get their own software working well!