I concur with the Linux. The choice is up to you, but I think Fedora is good.
Look up or research Linux, there are many variants of the kernel, but the kernel is stable.
I would use gNewSense, it has 'alien' packages or downloads that can be used to run any rpm,yum or whatever.
gNewSense is also sponsored and accredited by the FSF.
You can download Pidgin from sourceforge.net and try to make it interact on a windows kernel.