Steps I took to do it:

0. Back up important data!
1. In Windows, use partition magic or something similar to shrink the size of your C: partition. This will leave your hard disk with a smaller C: and a bunch of free, unpartitioned space.
2. Start the Kubuntu installer. When you get to the part about disk partitioning (might need to select 'manually edit the partition table'),
a) Don't format the Windows partition!
b) Create one partition for the root filesystem ("/") ~20 GB and format as ext2 or ext3.
c) Create one swap partition ~1 GB and format as swap.
d) The rest of the space can be used as your shared space between Windows and Linux. It will need to be formatted as FAT32 so both can read/write.

e) (optional) Sometimes it is a good idea to put /home on it's own partition. This is not really necessary, especially if you already have a shared Win/Lin partition. In this case you can make "/" smaller, down to around 8-10 GB.

If you let the installer automagically take care of partitioning, it will skip step (d) and put all of your free space into a big "/". You can fix this and add another later, but it is much easier to do it at install time.

After you're done installing, you can do as rickh said and edit /etc/fstab if it has not already taken care of itself.

Refreshing to see the wife being proactive with the computer....

Some factoids which should really be posted on every street-corner:
1. If you don't have backups, you will eventually lose something---regardless of OS
2. Windows has every bit the capacity to cause havoc as does Linux--some would say more.
3. Switching to Linux MIGHT make your life better--or possibly worse.
4. Most people do not know how mature Linux has become. Possibly 80% of home users could do everything with Linux.
5. People are--by nature--suspicious of "free". They are also suspicious of change.
6. Never try to teach a pig to sing--It wastes your time, and annoys the pig.

"Never try to teach a pig to sing--It wastes your time, and annoys the pig."

That is an awesome quote! I teach and many many, of my teachers perfectly represent this.

Thank you again for all of the help everyone. I have been very impressed with the response that I got in my quest to make this change.

I am off to start getting kubuntu going on my desktop! Hopefully I will return triumphant

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Good luck with the move to Linux!

I got it up and running, we decided to just go whole hog. I backed up all of our windows files that we needed and then scrapped windows and went totally linux. We had downloaded a few programs a few years ago that came with all these junk folders that i couldn't delete so we just decided to start totally fresh and see how things work. If it doesn't work we have two other towers in the house that have windows on them.

mkpovak--our favorite kind of newbie.. soon you will be answering questions here.

Gotta admit, I'm pretty impressed by mkpovak as well! Two or three days ago it was "Will we lose all of our files?" but now it's "I've got it up and running."

Given that kind of initiative, you will do just fine with Linux!

If you run into trouble - and you will, we all do - don't panic. If you're not sure what to do, don't do anything just yet. Moving forward without a solid plan can quickly change a minor inconvenience into a major disaster if you're just grasping at straws. Find another computer, check into these forums, and explain what you're seeing. Chances are your "big disaster" can be mitigated with help from people here. Even if it seems really really bad and you think everything is down the toilet.

This should be a model post for new posters to take a look at: be polite, use google first and provide all the information that you can.

Because so many posts look like.........uhhhhhhhh...........this

Well I just have to re-iterate that everyone here helped so much. This forum is actually what helped me convince DH to ditch windows totally and go to linux. I showed him how I asked a question and actually GOT help, not like the $%^#&@ windows "support" you "get" when you need help and call the support number!

I am still working through a few little hiccups (mostly figuring out how to do things in a new operating system no big deal just takes some research on google and maybe a question here).

The only real problem I have found is that I can't open appleworks files but that is easily solved I will just get onto my laptop (running OS X) and save all of those files as plain text or even word files and then bring em back over to our desktop. Fixed easily enough

DH = Dumb Husband??

No never usually it means Dear Husband but sometimes you can insert any other bad word that starts with D