Is it therefore easier to have a seperate machine for dos or is the windows xp console suffishient, or
My opinion is that as a new user, it is best to have a seperate machine for linux. Something like fedora will install easily on a used computer, you'll be able to take all the defaults and have a working machine in short order. That will settle your boot loader question too because whatever linux distrabution you choose will have a default boot loader.
Where I live, it is easy to acquire a computer to run linux because linux is far less demanding in it's hardware requirements than Windows. I got my linux machine for free from someone because they were going to just throw it out and they'd have had to pay the city $20 to dispose of it. I don't know what things are like where you are but my opinion is that you should try to find an inexpensive used machine on which to install linux.
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