General Unix Learning

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Please forgive me if this is not the right place to turn but, I figure you
all would be able to share your wisdom with me.  

I am a Windows user and I've hated it for the past few years.  The Unix
experience I have accrued has mainly been working from a shell account;
nothing really in detail about the actual operating system or installation. 
I have considered FreeBSD & Linux, but really, for a desktop system do you
guys think it's viable for a nearly pure unix newbie to tinker around with
BSD?  Or would it be easier to start with Linux & eventually port over to
BSD?  

Normally I'd take my own advice (if you want to use BSD, use BSD, if you want
to use Linux at the end of the day, use that) but I'm just trying to be
practical with all learning curves taken into consideration.

My deepest apologies if I should not be asking something like this here.  But
any replies would be terribly appreciated.