I use
duckduckgo these days most of the time. start page is also in my browser search list.
I use firefox with noscript httpseverywhere ghostery and betterprivicy, cslite for cookies .Also opendns is installed
My OS is 100% free linux Fedora 19 64 at the moment. I consider linux more secure than windows with a lot less upkeep and less viruses than mac. All the software is free from a repository.A big plus.
A good distribution for beginners is linux mint
http://www.linuxmint.com/index.phpI use mate desktop with compiz myself because I like eyecandy .
To me windows is just one big piece of mal/spyware. Do you know why they call it windows ? Everyone can see in.
I also have windows 7. I dual boot. The only reason I keep windows is for my gps unit. Ounce or twice a year I boot into windows to update the map. What a pain.
A word of warning you need to read first more so with efi(secureboot) on windows8 machines before you try installing to your hard drive.The best way to try it or any distro is to load a live image onto a usb drive and boot from the usb drive.
I have the tor browser bundle on my machine that is the best way to go.