Hi Friends. I still don't use Linux on my computer but i'm thinking about to leave the evil empire and enjoy the penguin gang. I feel sick when my firewall alert me that explorer.exe is tring to connect to internet even when i'm not running it. If Gates and Balmer want to know something about me, why they just don't e-mail me...?

Well, i'm a little bit confused with all that stuff about boot, root, swap, partitions etc., so the questions are:
- How can i install Linux on my hard disk and keep working with windows too? (...i want to migrate without traumas).
I have 1Gb ram memory, Pentium 3 1000 hz processor and four partitions in my 80Gb barracuda hd, first for w2k so (more or less 15Gb free), second for music, pix and other stuff, third for work, and fourth is completely free.

Do must i to repartitionize anything?

I tryed a live distro running from the cd rom and was great, so what distribution do you recommend for a beginner?

Thank you very much everybody.

get mandrake 9.2 and you should look up some info on the topic "dual booting" theres many posts in here about it.

Welcome to LQ.

If you have any spare partitions (it sounds like the fourth is your best bet) then when you get to the partitioning part of an installer, choose that partition. You may need to delete/remove the partition so that it is seen as 'unused space', you may not, it depends on the distro (most are good at this these days).

In big, bold, italic letters: BEFORE YOU INSTALL ANYTHING, MAKE A BACKUP OF ANY IMPORTANT DATA, BUT ALSO ANY DATA THAT YOU CAN'T GET BACK EASILY SHOULD IT ALL GO HORRIBLY WRONG!

Ok, warning over.

If this is your first Linux distro you're thinking about, then you have to ask yourself: Do I want something that will break me into the Linux arena nice and easily, or do I want something that'll mean I have to climb the learning curve quickly?

What you are looking for is called dual booting.
Take a visit at www.tldp.org or make a google search about that.
It's a common procedure and you should have no problem at all
since the live cd worked great at dicovering your hardware.

I suggest the new Mandrake 9.2 (isos available now for free).

Good luck and dont forget to read the fine manuals!

Thank you very much for your answers. Linux community is really a nice place to be. I take good note on your advising.