In spite of the ultra - politically correct philosophy of Ubuntu, I think it does have the easiest learning curve for Windows users and seems to be a good, stable Linux distro although I have heard complaints about security.
If I did not still have to make a living with MS products, I would have switched to it by now.
Firefox is better than IE in every way.
You should try MEPIS, which is a KDE build of UBUNTU. It is even easier and more user friendly and “just works” right out of the box than UBUNTU.