I'm using Ubuntu 6.10 right now. It just took me an hour to make room for the installation in Windows by moving files around. It then took 45 minutes from reboot to install Ubuntu 6.10 in the space. Theres a few things to know though, and you will really want to write these down:
- If you dual boot, don't let the partitions make themselves, you probably wont find much left afterwards!
- Always install Linux after Windows
- Try to use LILO if you're a beginner as your boot loader (ignore this if theres no clear and simple option to use it, GRUB is also great)
- You NEED this: a SWAP partition thats at least the same size as your RAM, preferably double - its type is Linux - SWAP
- You NEED this: a root partition ( / ) that fills the rest of your disk and is of type ext3
- Its NICE to have this: a boot partition ( /boot ) that is 512MB big - this just makes your disk a bit tidier and is completely unessential
Heres how nice Ubuntu is... the Internet connection that I use is on the Windows machine next to me. Ubuntu automatically does all of the network configuration and Internet configuration and I just installed over a dozen packages from the Internet using the built in Add / Remove feature. Firefox comes with a spell checker built in too in 6.10.
Note: there is a project called WINE. It lets you install and run Windows applications in Linux. I found repeatedly that the Windows version of HalfLife actually gets better frame rates when run through WINE in Linux than it does in Windows itself. WINE has now been massively upgraded so that about 95% of modern applications - including Office 2003 if you really don't want to leave it behind - will run in Linux. Even Steam and HalfLife 2 / Doom 3 will run! Its incredible.
Picture this: an operating system that doesn't crash, that does everything you need it to do, has a very shallow learning cure, has an intuitive interface and allows you to play all of your favorite games and use all of your favorite applications with minimal configuration...
Thats Ubuntu 6.10
Oh, and this version has got nearly all of the SATA hard disk problems ironed out too, so compatibility has never been better!
Quick Edit:
Another good version for beginners is Mandrake 10, though its no where near as simple as Ubuntu 6.10. Good versions for more advanced people are RedHat or Debian. Ubuntu is based on Debian and Debian is widely seen as one of the most powerful Linux distributions and is my personal favorite, but only because Ive used it for years. for new users its like pulling teeth.