Hi I am a complete newbie to all this, I have a HP Pavilion ze4420us laptop.

Will it be straightforward to install I heard that installation onto a laptop is fraught with difficulty. What is the best distribution to have? I want to be able to do as much as I can do with windows so I will partition my hard drive and dual boot , any tips on this process without having to purchase partition magic? All tips will be greatly appreciated , sorry if I posted in the wrong forum.
Thanks
Alan

instaling on a laptop will probably be ok accept for hardware difficulties such as your modem. other that that I have had alot of success instaling on a laptop.

Your distribution comes with a partitioning program. IF you have to partition an NTFS parition however you may need to use MANDRAKE to parition as it supports this and then install any other distribution. I installed FEDORA and REDHAT 9 on my laptop and it worked perfecally accept that the IBM had an internal winmodem that I have to been able to get driver for yet.

-jax8

slackware is a good distribution

it may seem a little hard at first, but you get used to it....
it just makes you learn faster

i have a hp pavillion laptop and my installation of slackware was flawless