Hi Chris. I have several machines that are dual boot machines. Most of the time they run linux, but if necessary, can boot DOS, Windows 95, nt, 2000, etc. The trick is to shrink your windows partition so you can use unallocated disk space for linux and swap partitions. In order to do this, you first need to defragment your windows partition. Then, depending on which type of file system you have, vfat or ntfs, you will need either fips20, for vfat partitions, or partition magic for ntfs partitions, in order to shrink the windows partition, and make disk space available for the linux partitions. After you've installed linux on the new partitions, you can tweak ether the lilo or grub boot loaders to find and boot your windows partition. http://www.tldp.org/ is your friend for lots of linux info. Of course, you should also consult the site for which ever distribution you choose. In order to decide which, you should visit the various distribution sites and read about them before making a decision. For example, www.slackware.com, www.debian.org, www.redhat.com, etc. As others have said, which distribution you choose is very much a matter of personal preference. The fips20 program I mentioned is distributed under the gnu public license, and should be run from a dos boot disk. Gene
