@ mericet
From the OP
Kind regards

what was that??

Is the Window's drive D:used by Vista? If so, you could do at TobyGSD and use Vista's own partition manager to shrink the size of the D: partition, leaving free space to install Linux on.

If it is unused, then you can delete the partition instead of resizing it. Then install Linux on the unused space on that hard drive.

Using Vista to resize it's own NTFS partition may be safer, but I haven't had problems letting the Linux installer do it. My Netbook came with Vista on it, and I used Vista's partition manager to shrink it. (Later I replaced the drive with an Intel SSD drive and didn't reinstall Windows)

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Another option is to use the Wubi installer to install Linux onto a file inside the Windows installation. However this will install Ubuntu which you said you didn't want.

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Linux installations use "repositories". They are collections of packages used to install programs for a particular distribution and version. They will also have a package manager where you can browse or search for available packages. This is similar to the app stores that are the rage now.

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For insurance, it would be a good idea to first backup your Windows files, at least important documents and photos that you can't reinstall. Before the Linux installer will reformat or resize partitions, it will tell you what will be done. Pay attention to what it says before clicking OK and you should be OK.

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