Google is your friend. If you go to Google.com/linux then you will get only
Linux hits.

The Ubuntu site has loads of help. Go to help.ubuntu.com for Ubuntu specific
help.

Finally get your feet wet by getting a CD and running it from the Live CD
without installing. You can also install Ubuntu inside Windows with WUBI by
inserting the CD in while you are in Windows. It will then offer to install
Ubuntu to your C drive. This is not the best solution, but it will give you
a taste without partitioning your hard drive. Distrowatch.com has a list of
all of the top 100 distributions (there are now over 400). Most downloads
are free. You just need to download the ISO file and burn a CD from it.
See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

One of the best ways is to just try it, and see what questions come to mind. The
easiest way is to download the desktop version of Linux Mint (which is based on
Ubuntu, but has some things pre-installed that make life easier) and "burn the
image" to a CD. Then you can boot from the CD and try it out, without making any
changes to your hard drive.

When a question comes up, use Google to find the answer. There are so many
forums and blogs about Linux that you can find the answer 99.9% of the time,
without having to ask a question.

There are two types of hardware which might give you grief. One is wireless
network adapters, the other is printers. And to a lesser extent, webcams.

There are free, downloadable manuals and user guides, but I find most of them
have an overwhelming level of detail.

http://ubuntu-manual.org/

Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 is a comprehensive beginners guide for the
Ubuntu operating system. It is written under an open source license and is
free for you to download, read, modify and share.

I've run ubuntu for a year without ever using the command line interface,
GUI seems much safer to me.

If 10.04 works from a live disk then install it as dual boot,
it should be able to read all your windows data,
and hopefully everything you need will be there.

But windows viruses and stupid games wont work.

WUBI seems a waste of time to me - and I dont think it can see your windows
data.

When you are ready to have a look at some of the innards, search iTunes Store
for Linux.
There are webcasts from various universities on iTunesU which helped me.