I am thinking about installing a linux partition on my 200gb hard drive does anybody no what flavor or version of linux i should use? i mostly use my computer for web surfing instant messaging and HTML coding and every once in a while a little gaming but i will still have win 2k installed on a seperate partition.

if you have an idea please post

I've never used linux, but I've seen good reviews of xandros 3, I think it's geared towards the less technical type.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1738495,00.asp

i run redhat linux 9 next to windows xp and recommend rh9. the install allows you to specify NOT to overwrite your existing windows stuff. just choose NOT to install a boot loader and use a floppy to boot to linux. there are other options but this is the simplest one. good luck.

RH9 is quite old - a lot has improved since then in Linux world.
The descendants of RedHat Linuxes is the Fedora Core series but unfortunately FC stability is a far cry from the RH stability of old.

Some other user friendly mainstream Linux distributions: SuSE, Mandrake, (K)Ubuntu