To be able to boot from the cd you may need to change the bios configuration. During the first moments of startup you'll probably see a message that says something like 'press <del> (or f1 or esc) to enter the bios menu'. Once you are in there look for a line about boot order and set it so that the cd is your first option (make c your second - if the cd fails you'll still boot into your system). Save and exit and try again.

About partitions, the sizes indicated are fine, but I'd suggest you also make another partition for /home where your personal files will be stored. That way if you totally mess up your system to the piont of needing to reinstall your data is safe.

Don't worry too much about creating the partitions or formatting them. If you are going to install any of the big distros (and I suppose kubuntu could be counted as one of them) you'll have access to an easy graphical partition / format tool during installation.

Finally, a live cd, apart from being useful to get an idea of what a distro is like without actually installing it on your system, is a great tool for system rescue operations (also for windows!!). Knoppix is probably the most famous one. I peronally also love SystemRescueCD, which is small (virtually no gui) but packed full of rescue tools. Using one of these cds you can get access to your HD and either make the necessary changes to the configuration files to be able to get it working again, or salvage the information that is on the disks. I recently used it to get some crytical files off a neighbours pc with XP which had suffered a fatal virus attack.

Hmm..... I wouldn't go so far as to say no drivers. Its been my experience that many distros have tons of drivers built into the kernel, but you still may need the occasional driver. Best way to avoid this is check hdwr compatibility BEFORE you start.

Someone mentioned Mandrake. I have installed MDK onto about 1 dozen different PCs- all different, and MDK has had drivers for all but 3 pieces of hdwr. Wxp, Wme, W2000 had drivers for only half of the stuff.

Have you set your BIOS to place "boot from CD' to be first in boot order?

I have used the MDK installer on a wide range of Windows/ MDK configurations/installations and it has done all the resizing and partitioning of hd flawlessly. MDK automatically creates a /home directory that is separate from where the OS lives so you can reinstall , upgrade or do damage control without the /('root') folder affecting /home and viceversa.

Whichever method you use, you should defrag Windows first and BACKUP-BACKUP-BACKUP! If you have a 160gb hd that's plenty. leave your Win partition alone and resize it to fit a FAT 32 partition for file sharing and another partition for linux. Try to put the bootloader onto the MBR of the Windows partition so you can select which OS to boot into from the get go.

good luck

oh yeah I'm running kubuntu right now! its pretty nice so far. just fooling around trying to get the feel. i really like the browser system its pretty cool... make things allot easier! quick question with windows you can go into the device manager to find any conflicts or devices with out proper drivers... how would i do that here? so far i haven't noticed any problems but i just want to make sure. In fact this is by far the easiest installation i have ever done it took at most 15 minutes and windows popped up with sound/video/ethernet all perfect:} ide have to say that in just the first 20 minutes linux has been on my system... i love it:}


oh and another great question for you... how the hell do i install stuff:} i downloaded macromedia flash player... ya know like ya do! and i am very... very confused with the whole install situation.

That depends on the format you downloaded in.

If it is a prepackaged format (like .deb) try double clicking on the file (it works for rpms in Fedora anyway...I'm sure it can be done from the command line, but someone else will have to point you in the right direction).

If it is a .bin or .sh file you need to run it from the commandline:
$ sh <filename>.bin

if it is a .tgz or .bz2 file you'll need to unpack it and do
./configure
make
make install
from the command line

You might take a look at the Unofficial Ubuntu Guide (google for it because I can't post links yet). Kubuntu is based off of Ubuntu, it just uses the K Desktop Environment instead of the Gnome Desktop. It has steps to walk you through installing java, flash, video playback, DVD playback, etc.

What you want to do is add "Repositories" (servers with thousands of applications already tuned to work on Ubuntu). Then you can just open Synaptic and install thousands of programs (including flash player) with a click of the box. Or if you're into using the command line, a simple "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install flashplayer-mozilla" should do the trick.