About to jump in head first... linux noob

Hello all. I used to work with a guy who raved about linux and I know it is used for servers and I am sure many many many other things. I have been meaning to check it out for oh......8 years lol.

So here is the start of my probing into your great minds.

First off my PC:

HP Laptop
Vista Home Premium 32bit
Intel Core 2 Duo: T7500 2.20 GHZ
2 gigs of ram (tried 4 was too much and caused random BSOD)
2 x 150gb HD (NTSF as of now)

My Questions
I want to set Linux in a partition on the second hard drive which I use right now for all my storage.

First how should I go about partitioning that hard drive and before I do I am going to move all the files to the first HD for now. Basically what program should I use or can I just partition it with vista?

Answered this myself....easily done within Vista....one plus side to Vista lol

Second I plan on partitioning that into 2 maybe 3 partitions. How big should I make the partition for Linux?


I think that is really it for now that should get me going.

Thanks a bunch for the help to come with this Noob!

Dominic

Ok now knowing how easy it is to make a partition in Vista, I went ahead and made a 24gig partition.

Now should I use NTSF or FAT32 for format?

Thanks Dominic

Use NTFS.

Space depends on the linux distro you are using, I might recommend 10gb at least.

Actually, for linux, you should just make a partition and leave it unformatted. Linux will then see that unpartitioned space and by default will want to install there. You should be able to get by with 10 gigs without any problems, and I would let linux set up its own partitions in there rather than you doing it manually (It will need / Swap and possibly /home).

Linux will be able to read and write to your Windows partitions, but Windows will not be able to read/write to your linux ones.

Ok now knowing how easy it is to make a partition in Vista, I went ahead and made a 24gig partition.

Now should I use NTSF or FAT32 for format?

Thanks DominicLinux uses a Journaled FS, known as EXT3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3).
When in Rome, do as the Romans do :)

Awesome thanks for your guys responses I am going to start looking into which one I am going to go with right now and may try downloading and installing it today.

Thanks Dominic