so...i've narrowed it down to lycoris and mandrake. i have a 20 (18.6 in reality) GB HD running WinME. I was planning on giving Windows 12 gigs and Linux 6 gigs...something close to that. anyway, i understand i'm supposed to partition the drive for duel booting. I've also come to the understanding that mandrake comes with its own partitioning software...does lycoris?

would it be easier for me to just use mandrake with its built in partitioner or use a third party partitioner before hand?

thanks. (any other suggestions on my linux journey are welcome)

i am not familiar with mandrake. but i think that the built in partitioner will be efficient to do your task. i prefer to use fdisk.

i don't know anything about lycoris
mandrake has a very easy to use partitioning tool (do the graphical install) i would highly suggest using that. you should also make a swap partition for linux, should be twice your ram, but i've been told you lose performance if it's more than 100mb
if you install windows first, mandrake second, than install LILO to the MBR (master boot record), you should not have any problems dual booting.