Several questions
 

I am totally new to Linux. I want to use Linux for just everyday stuff like websurfing, chatting, and the like. So I want something easy to install and easy to use...

1. What distro? A friend told me to try Mandrake so I have the downloaded and ready to go. Is there something else you would recommend over Mandrake for ease of installation and use?

2. I want to dual boot on seperate hard drives. Currently I have two hard drives, with the primary being an 80gb NFTS drive that has windows. THe other is 180GB NTFS that is for media. I've got a blank 30gb hard drive I would like to put Linux on. So, how would I go about dual booting that?

3. Will Linux be able to read and access my 180gb media drive? It's NTFS... if that doesn't work, is there some other format that both Windows and Linux can access?


Thanks,
Jake

Welcome to LQ.

1) Mandrake should be fine for a first time user

2) To make sure you don't damage your current installs I would put only the 30GB drive in the machine and install linux then plug in the windows drive as a slave and create an entry in your linux bootloader config to boot Windows too.

3) NTFS write support isn't very good (can corrupt files) under linux. vfat (FAT32) can be ready by both so it is the reccomened sharing filesystem for dual boot systems.