hello i've been a die hard windows fan but im up to trying new things and so i want to make a dual boot system with windows 2000 and pclinuxos (looks and feels like xp... thats what the slogan is anyway :p) anywho i partition my cruddy drive as so Drive 0 12.1GB windows 2000 (NTFS) Drive 1 1.7GB linux (Linux native i think ext 2..) 0.3GB Swap (have no idea what this does...) 2.1GB Shared files (Fat 32) i have no idea what im doing the only way i got close to installing was to boot from cd and then it opens it so i can test linux to see if i like it but it had an icon called install so im assumming thats how i do it i followed are the steps and then it froze... also i don't get an internet connection so how to i get my computer to recognize my USB wifi thingy im so lost It's really sad Im great when it comes to other people's computers but when it comes to my own i always get stuck with the weird stupid porblems that i haveno idea what happened :S

If possible, boot to windows and post the make, version of your USB Wifi adapter. Linux has a tendency to not be able to detect Wifi as easily as Ethernet connections. From there I think the rest of us can try to help.

well im not too worried about the wifi as it's going to be wired but i dont know how to install and how to partition my hard drive i googled it but they talk in linux talk so im soooooo confused lol please help i have no idea what a swap drive is and how big it should be and how big my main linux drive should be and all help please Once Computer and all parts come in from shippment CPU: Pentium 4 1.7 Ghz VGA: Nvidia Fx 5500 EQ RAM: 1.25GB HDD: 60 GB 7200 RPM OPT: CDRW/DVD +/- RW all in small factor case = god

First and foremost you have two factors to consider. Firstly 500mhz 192mg RAM and 4GB HDD is fairly marginal for a modern Linux like Linspire etcetc. Second you do not need to make partitions any good Linux will give you advanced install options on installation and therefore would advise to leave at one FAT32 partition, it should also recognize Windows and setup a Dual-Boot, thoug I believe that NTFS is a readable format anyway under Linux. Personally would give Ubuntu a go: http://mirror.cs.umn.edu/ubuntu-releases/6.06/

most linux installs have an auto-partition option. i suggest using that. a swap drive is similar to virtual memory on windows. usually its very small compared to the other linux partitions. i think 1 or 2 gigs should be plenty.