[wellylug] laptop advice sought

[bob dugan]

I just bought my first laptop [acer aspire 3002LCi].  It has preinstalled XP 
Home.  The 40G  hdd appears to have three partitions, two 18G fat32 
partitions and a smaller one containing "diagnostics".

I want to install Linux on the Laptop and retain the XP OS.  I have done this 
occasionally but not recently [windows 98] on a home PC.

I am wondering whether there are any odd hooks that I should be aware of. 
Also, whether one distro is better suited than the others.  

I am not a programmer.  Nor do I have any experience with XP or windows 
generally.  For the last five or six years, all three of our family's PC run 
only Linux [RH8.0, suse9.2, and debian potato].  

Thanks for any advice

Bob