Dual-boot is pretty easy to do with most distros, particularly if you can leave Windows on one drive and put Linux on another. :)
The distro I've been using for the past couple of years is Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com/), which is essentially a desktop version of Red Hat (one of the more popular distros for business). It has a few quirks though (as does really any distro, it just depends on what you get used to).
A lot of people lately have been recommending Ubuntu (http://ubuntu.com/), which is a weird name, but is supposed to be very user-friendly and is pretty well-supported. They've also got a live CD, which will boot you into Linux without installing anything on your hard drive, so you can play around and see if you like it before installing anything. I haven't used it, but I'm a bit tempted... it looks very nice! (I just ordered some CDs for myself, so we'll see. :)) They have some basic screenshots of the installation process here (http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=465&slide=1) if you want to take a look.
You can download the images for the CDs from both sites and burn them yourself, or Ubuntu will mail you CDs for free (in the US at least... not sure about Canada).
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Date: 2005-10-17 04:17 am (UTC)The distro I've been using for the past couple of years is Fedora (http://fedora.redhat.com/), which is essentially a desktop version of Red Hat (one of the more popular distros for business). It has a few quirks though (as does really any distro, it just depends on what you get used to).
A lot of people lately have been recommending Ubuntu (http://ubuntu.com/), which is a weird name, but is supposed to be very user-friendly and is pretty well-supported. They've also got a live CD, which will boot you into Linux without installing anything on your hard drive, so you can play around and see if you like it before installing anything. I haven't used it, but I'm a bit tempted... it looks very nice! (I just ordered some CDs for myself, so we'll see. :)) They have some basic screenshots of the installation process here (http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=465&slide=1) if you want to take a look.
You can download the images for the CDs from both sites and burn them yourself, or Ubuntu will mail you CDs for free (in the US at least... not sure about Canada).
Hope that's useful. :)