2 HDDs. 1st one - 10 gig one pratition with Win98 (drive C, FAT32). the 2nd one - 120 gigs, 3 partitions: 1st - Win2003 Server (i think i kept it FAT32), 2nd - empty (possible FAT32, but i don't remeber right now. while ago when i installed HD figured i'll install Linux on it), 3rd FAT32 - data drive.

i want (if possible) to install Linux on empty partition, keeping everything else as is.

problems are,
- i never installed Linux, and iv'e never used one. but my understanding is distributions today are very userfriendly, and i should be ok.
- but i've read somewhere that i need to reserve some space for partition for linux's boot manager, or something like that on my primary drive, and it all sounded to complicated. yet people that i spoke with (tho i don't know any Linux gurus or even power users) were sceptical of this info. yet this is pretty much whats stopping me from even trying - i don't wanna loose what i have.

so i guess i just wonder - can i just download some latest Linux distribution, burn it to CD and start installing it? are there any known issues installing Linux onto a system with multiple Windows versions already installed?

if its possible, is tere anything i should do to my system? (other than backup my data?)

Thanks in advance!

I'd recommend SUSE, Mandriva or Fedora. They've got good graphical installations that'll walk you through getting Linux installed on your system. You don't need an extra partition for the boot loader, as this can overwrite the Windows one (this doesn't mean you won't be able to access your Windows installations). Your Windows installations should be detected and set up during the Linux installation, and you'll be able to read from them once in Linux (and write to the FAT32 partitions).

Thank you for your reply!

i've read reviews on this site (what a real help! respect to the creators and contributors!) and decided to try SUSE. people seem to like its looks, simplicity of install, and HW detection; everyone seems to love their "control pannel" (don't remeber the name). commonly mentioned weknesses were few packadges (what on earth are on those FIVE CDs than!? lol), and poor multimedia suport - ppl had problems playing MP3s and no video playback out of the box... don't care much for those things at the moment, but if i understand correctly i can fill these in with 3rd party software if i need to, right?

"what on earth are on those FIVE CDs than!?"

Lots of apps to do just about everything.

"i can fill these in with 3rd party software if i need to, right?"

Yes, tho getting dvd's playing with suse is harder than other distros. Can be done. mp3's on xmms were not too hard.

That's down to German law, which meant SUSE had to have those features disabled. Using the Packman repository installs working versions of the programs used to play the files.

Was fairly simple for me. Just tell SUSE where to find the Packman repository, then install the programs and files required for DVD playback through YaST.

"Was fairly simple for me. Just tell SUSE where to find the Packman repository, then install the programs and files required for DVD playback through YaST."

Easy enough now, yes. At the time I was working with suse 10 pre-release, so it was a hassle. And I'm a Mandrake user, so it took a while to find this stuff out. Mandrake just needs fewer packages updated (just add css and codecs). It took me a while to realize that suse had deliberately 'broken' versions of players to comply... So it's tricky for a nebie I dare say...

thank you very much for your replys... i did it! SUSE OSS 10. it made an additional boot loder with Windows item, upon selecting which old windows boot menu comes up - very cool. im impressed with GUI graphics, way better then i saw before on Linux systems. and people were warried that KDE will run slow on that machine (Athlon 700 Mhz, 384 MB ram) - not so, runs very well, almost no lagging (only very minor lagging on some windows' resizes).

and, naturally (for something done 1st time ever), i ended up with a couple of unresolved issues, one of wich im relatevly sure is a bug, but i'll make those a separate posts in SUSE Dist forum, its probably more efficient to keep 'em separate.