Aha! A linux thread!
Mandrake and SuSE are the best distros for newbies... I started out with Mandrake (which my *nix expert friend recommended me, since it has nice GUI's for almost everything), but SuSE is nice too. I'm soon gonna change to RedHat once they come out with v8.0.
Xantar, you can quite happily fit a cut-down-don't-install-all-the-apps version of Linux on a 1.1 GB HDD (my mandrake install takes up about 2.1 GB, and that's with Apache, Samba, KDE, GNOME, in fact almost everything), but you'll be pretty squished for space, no?
If you have a high speed connection, just download Mandrake 8.2 ISO'd from them... SuSE are bastards about this and won't put up a friggin' ISO image, which makes them tards IMO. If you'd rather buy it (and you do get more stuff with the bought versions, such as StarOffice), then either SuSE or Mandrake is a good bet.
ThatGuy, if you want to run it as a server you're going to have to make a tradeoff between ease of use and stability. Mandrake et al are the easiest to use in general (but if you want to network with Win machines you're gonna need to use Samba which means lots of command line stuff), but distros like Debian and Slackware offer the fastest and most reliable platforms... RedHat is a good compromise.
Null does seem to have had an odd time of things. Linux shouldn't really care what partition it's on; the Linux bootloader is not a fickle beast like the Windows one (which will only work if Windows is installed on hda1, or the primary IDE master, or the C drive as you know it). Also, installing Windows AFTER Linux has a tendency to fcuk Linux up terribly... windows overwrites the Linux bootloader (so you need a floppy to boot it), and XP has a tendency to "accidentally" reformat Linux partitions when you install it, as my friend Bongfish discovered (Windows can't read Linux partitions unless they're FAT32 (and what idiot would use FAT32, the most god-awful format there is?), and presumes that the Linux partitions are bad sectors, and "repairs" them). Install Windows, defrag (or run partition magic to create your Linux partitions - personally I recommed frmatting to ReiserFS when you install, alhough Ext3 is almost as good) and you should be OK.
BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST! Partitioning is risky even at the best of times. If you can, move all your documents onto a seperate hard drive - if you make it FAT32 both Windows and Linux will be able to read and write to it - just in case.
Plug in all your hardware when you install. Installing new hardware in Linux can be a bitch, but it should autodetect and install all hardware when you install Linux. Check your distro's website for hardware support (there's shedloads of ****ty-ass hardware that won't work under Linux cos it need software emulation, which they only ever write for windows), but if you have nice hardware this shouldn't be a problem.
Is there a Linux Q&A anywhere? yep. In fact, there's probably more of them than there are for windows. Google is your friend, or failing that sites such as
www.linux.org. Most of the distro sites also give a fairly good idea of what Linux is all about.