few questions about linux,I've never use it befor I have a pc with windows m.e 500mhz 200mb ram 10gb hd,I would love to install a version of linux,#1 will I need boot disks if so what and where could I find them also is it fat 32 or what?will someone please give me a few pointers of installing linux?thanks for your time.

First an introduction to linux : Linux is a free, opensource kernel originally created by Mr. Linus Torvalds in an attemp to make a free unix variant, but it is developed my hundreds of people all over the world, through the internet. An Operating system is a kernel + basic system utilities, these days the kernel Linux plus many basic system utilities combined together is also called Linux (ie, what you want to install) Since Linux is open source, there are many distributions of linux (companies or non-profit projects developing their own version of Linux) To Install Linux on your computer, you have to download it (or buy it) from any of the Linux Distributors, The most popular of which are : Redhat, Mandrake, Debian. But there are hundreds of other great distributions. If you're new to Unix/Linux, you should probably get an easy to use distribution such as redhat or mandrake. You get info about all the linux distributions from here Linux can be configured to use many file systems, most common of which are ext2/ext3 and ReiserFS. Both of them in my opinion are much better and advanced than fat32 or NTFS. If you're going to download linux via the net, you should have a high speed internet (not dialup), or it'll end up being a very frustrating experience, also, if you're going to download a major vendor's distribution, check if the distribution supports installing directly from a hard drive (else a cd writer will be needed) More info can be obtained from a Linux distribution website.