A little bit of info about LaTeX:
LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.
LaTeX is not a word processor! Instead, LaTeX encourages authors not to worry too much about the appearance of their documents but to concentrate on getting the right content. For example, consider this document:
On windows I am using Miktex as LaTeX compiler and TeXnicCenter as editor.
The reason I use TeXnicCenter is the amount help in the form of toolbars and bottoms. Another great thing is it can be intregrated with Miktex.
I recommend install the komplete version of Miktex to avoid missing packages.
On linux i recommend runningTeXLive,