Well after thinking long and hard about it (okay, not really), I decided that I want to set up my new laptop so that it has a dual-boot with XP and Mandrake 9.1. Considering how I'm totally new to the world of Linux, I figured I would turn here for help.

As the laptop came with XP preinstalled, the entire hard drive is NTFS. I've heard this can be a problem when installing Linux, so I'm getting Partition Magic to make the partition for me rather than using the one that comes with Mandrake. Now, how big of a partition should I make for Linux (it's a 30 GB hard drive, currently with 10 GB free--I have no clue where those 20 GB went and am currently on the hunt for them)? Being new to the world I don't know how big Linux programs tend to get and how much hard drive space I should leave for them.

Also, the installation guide says that Mandrake automatically detects some hardware during its installation. Now, I'm wondering, which should I have it detect: the laptop's touch pad, or the little optical mouse I use 80% of the time? Or will it detect both?

Also, any generic help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. I've searched around a bit so I think I know what to do, but the more information I get and the more often I see it, the more confident I'll be. Thanks for the help.

I just installed SuSE 8.2 on a Compaq Presario 2170US with a 40gig drive. I used PM to resize the WinXP partition to about 6gig, and used the rest for SuSE. You have to set up a swap partition which is usually twice your installed RAM. The rest can be set up as root (/) or better yet, split it into / and /home. That way, if you ever have to reinstall or you want to upgrade your distribution, your data on /home can be easily saved or backed up.
The BIOS on my Compaq has a setting to autodetect an external mouse and disable the touchpad. If I boot up without the mouse, the touchpad is active. If I attatch the mouse before booting, it is active and the touchpad is disabled. I imagine that the HP laptops have the same or a similar BIOS.
At the risk of a distro war, Mandrake is ok, but tends to be bleeding edge and sometimes a little shaky. SuSE is more tried and true. One advantage of SuSE 8.2 is the kernel will support linux's limited ACPI support without recompiling the kernel. The acpid daemon is not turned on by default, but you can start it using SuSE's YAST control center. Only the battery monitor is currently implemented.
Good luck on the linux plunge.
Zane

you can find a lot of those 20 gigs and recover them (mainly a bunch of bundled software that isnt actually installed yet). how big to make the partition? depends on what you plan on doing, i try to give more to linux but its not really for programs( which are smaller with linux) but because i use more multi media files under linux cause im in linux more. although i like to leave my mp3's on the windows side so i can play them whatever im in( cause linux can read ntfs but as far as windows reading rieserfs or something i dont know.) so thats just something to consider. ive used mdk on mine as well and it works as good as any. video mode is vesa cause of the graphics card being new but there is a patch its still devlopement though so i reckon i havent fooled with it. but it plays dvds and what not just fine.
and you can read some other threads here to see how to set up your config file to use both touchpad and usb mouse without logging out.

also acpi works from install. i cant remember but you might need to turn it on in your grub.conf or your lilo though

thanks for the help, I'm clearing out some of the junk and running scandisk and disk defragmenter to get ready for the partitioning. I noticed PM8 has a wizard called "Install New OS." Does anybody know if this will be a good way to get the partition ready for Linux, or am I better off just doing it all on my own?

I would just use the SuSE installation routine. If you don't want to set up separate root and home partitions, just let the software do the work for you.

Zane