I am currently running Windows 7. I want to install Linux onto a second hard drive. Being a newbie, which Linux should I start with?
I have a Compaq laptop.

Go to http://distrowatch.com/ and pick any of the top ten (out of the top 100 on the righthand side of the page). All of those (with perhaps the exception of Arch) are pretty user-friendly. Download and burn a LiveCD, boot to it, play around, see how you like it.

EDIT: another good way is to install a virtual machine on Windoze, and install linux virtually.

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Start with a live cd first.

Knoppix, DSL (Damn Small Linux) and Slax are very good. Only know the URL of Slax from my head: www.slax.org. Perhaps www.dsl.org will get you to Damn Small Linux.

If you like Slax, give Slackware a try. If you like Knoppix, perhaps better to use Debian. DSL is also a clone of a bigger distro. Slackware as well? Forgot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damn_Small_Linux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_live_cd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix

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I am DLing Ubuntu now.
What about this virtual machine. Do I need Daemon, or something like it?

Salix is one of the slackware-based more user-freindly distros. I installed it in a virtual machine to play around with. I liked it, but personally prefer straight slackware.

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I use virtualbox. I haven't heard of Daemon, I'll look it up.

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If this is what you mean, not really (almost though). Virtualbox (and VMWare) let you install an OS to a virtual machine that runs within your host (in your case Windoze) machine. The OS of the virtual machine can be anything supported by the software. Running windoze XP on my linux host was quite simple, in my experience. The reverse should be as simple, I'd imagine.

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It seems to me, from something I read, it is like a partition maker tool

I was looking at Slax. I'm thinking thats what I will start with.
I am also DLing virtualBox now. I'll report back later after I play around with it a little.
Thx for the info, to all who replied.

No problem. Have fun, and if you hit a bump, post back. Most of all, have fun!

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OK, so I installed VM, burned Slax image to disc and booted, (do I need to always boot from disc)?
I was having an issue with my mouse being stuck within the window. I couldnt get outside the window to close it,(X, in the top right corner).
I, rt clk/ctrl, to use mouse and keyboard in VM, then unable to switch back to normal use with same function.
Had to, ctrl/alt/del, to escape VM.
God, it sucks being new at shit.
I know I'm just not quite getting it yet, but I will!

If you're using VirualBox, use the right Ctrl key to release the mouse.

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If you're running it in VirtualBox, then you shouldn't even have needed to burn the image to a CD. VirtualBox supports booting straight from a CD image on your hard disk (i.e. the *.iso file you downloaded).

If you install a virtual machine and then boot off CD-ROM a live distro, it's like waering two condoms on top of each other... And one will really do the trick.

Either install a virtual machine running Linux, or boot a live CD (like Slax).

I would go for Slax and install it in a second partition, next to Windows. Don't be put off by the Windows disk resizer. Vista allowed "a mere" 40% of the 120 GB disk to ne used for "something else". But Linux has no problems with "just" 50 GB... Just like with RAM. Each Windows needs 4 GB of RAM nowadays. I still have the beleif that most Linuxes still don't know what to do with more than 1 GB of it.. )

Still: go for it. Slax is cool.

Once you get Slax up and running; I suggest you setup up a few more VM's and try things like Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian etc - basically as another poster suggested - anything in the top 10 at distrowatch.

And to put my foot in mouth and prepare for flaming: Slax is cool; Fedora is so much cooler

Jokes aside, the idea is that you experiment with a few different types of distro's and decide for yourself what tickles your fancy

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