I am new to linux and want to try it out. i know there are a bunch of different versions out there but what would be best for me to learn on? or what is the best one.
There's no such thing as the best distro (or worse distro, for that matter). Each his its own favorite distro, and people change distros all the time. There's a lot of freedom in open source.
My personal advice would be to stay away from Ubuntu (bloated, buggy, has built-in spyware). I really like Fedora (the latest version is awesome, I'm going to start using it as my main OS) and OpenSUSE is very nice too. There are graphical tools for almost every setting in OpenSUSE.
Arch Linux is very good fpr learning once you are comfortable with linux.
To piggyback on Ksajal, Manjaro is also a good way to learn Arch. Has the same core as Arch, but with a bunch of extras (like LibreOffice, GIMP, etc) built in.
If you are switching from Windows, then try Linux Mint 17.1 - its the closest thing to windows I've found, it comes with software manager - very handy and its easy to use and start with. Downside is, that it takes up about 1,5GB of RAM to boot, so its not the best for old slow computers.
Up to some years ago, there used to be a big difference in features between distros.
Since a couple of years, maybe 5 years or so, that difference has become much smaller.
Try some different distros out, the release model and package manager are usually the main features that make someone decide for a particular distro. You can use any distro you like. In the end, different distros serve different purposes because of the way they are prepackaged and the convenience thereof, rather than because of real differences in software. A lot of people will prefer certain distros over other because of political or ideological reasons rather than because of the software itself. After experimenting a bit, you'll make your own decisions.
If you want to use your machine for exactly the same things as you use a software console for, I would suggest starting out with a distro that is focused on the ease of use for such a scenario, like Manjaro for instance, which is based on Arch, and has the benefit of the AUR (Arch User Repository), which is the largest collection of available software.