will everything disappear, when i install?
 

okay this is my biggest question, once i pick a distro that fits the specs of my laptop (see my post Fedora 2 in this topic to see my specs if you really feel like helping me out) do i simply install the linux distro ontop of windows? or do i need to save all my files to be reinstalled after booting linux? i ask because i have something like 2400 songs in i-tunes and i would like to think that i will just be able to find them again with linux somewhere in my harddrive instead of having to burn them all to cd's before switching to linux.

i ask this because i really want the learning experience of learning linux without having windows to fall back on, i'm too old for trianing wheels.

and finally how easy is it to get to the internet in linux after the install, as i am sure i will have questions galore for all you penguinheads...so far i am leaning towards slackware as it seems to be the most minimalist and sleek/stable distro from what i've read, though i am still interested in ubuntu

thanks

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...TO-html.tar.gz

this should answer all of your questions. if you don't have a program that can open gzipped files, just do a google search for "linux+windows howto"

jrtayloriv

in true windows fashion, i was unable to open the link which you shared with me...

no prob, try this one

http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/...WTO/index.html

jrtayloriv

It looks like you haven't read enough about Linux. Linux is an operating system just like Windows is and you cannot install it "ontop of windows" as you would do with an application such as Office or whatever.
As for your other questions: no, you don't have to save all your files. You just need some free space on your HD so you can create the partitions needed for a Linux install. Then you'll need a bootloader to be able to choose which OS you'll boot, Windows or Linux (no problem, every distro of Linux comes with one). After installling you'll be able to listen to your favourite songs without any problems.
Getting access to the Internet from Linux is quite easy. Remember that Linux was primarily designed for and it grew with the Internet.

About slackware...while you seem to lack some knowledge about Linux I'd advice you to first try a LiveCD such as Knoppix or SuSE. That's a CD containing the whole Linux operating system but it won't install to your HD and, therefore it won't touch it. This way you can make a first impression about Linux and then you can decide if you wanna go further with it.

Anyway, read some more about Linux, read the topics here, at the Newbie section of this forum (a great forum) and also some tutorials. In this forum you'll see that many asked the same question as you did and it may guide you in your choice. Also you might take a look at www.distrowatch.com. and at www.tuxs.org.

Good luck and we're expecting you back to share us your impressions about Linux. You won't regret it!

in all honesty, its not that i haven't read enough about linux to know whether or not it would overwrite windows, its that i don't know enough about operating systems in general. but i'm learning already and i haven't even installed linux yet! i am going to take your suggestion to not try slack yet but i do believe that i will learn more by using an install instead of a liveCD (I've already made up my mind that i won't be going back to windoze)
[and harken, if you're still out there, i will skip the knoppix and SuSE since i feel i have it narrowed down to either:

ubuntu
gentoo
debian
mandrake]

but i will show my little newbieness yet again in asking: most documents/instruction packets give the options of Intel IA-64 or Intel x86 versions of their instructions. I run on a pentium 4, which one would apply to me.

thanks yet again for the helps

Well, if you don't know enough about OSs automatically implies that you don't know enough about Linux.
As for your choices: I'm a newbie myself and I went through the same problem...which distro? I started with Knoppix (both LiveCD and a HD install) and now I switched to Debian. Of course, feel free to choose any of the four you mentioned. I'm not in the position to recommend you the best, yet I heard Mandrake and/or ubuntu would be the best for beginners (although I hadn't any troubles installing Debian).

As for the right kernel version, for a P4 the right choice would be the 686 version, although if your processor has the EM64T extension, the version would be em64t-p4.