I'm just to new to this and was wondering if someone could help me ouyt on a few things. I currently own a Toshiba A60 Equium running a Pentiuim 4 2.80GHz with 1.18GB of Ram with Windows Xp service pack 1. i was wondering if my current setup would be suitable to run a Linux Os and how it would affect me running my Windows Os. I have read a lot and heard a lot about Linux and was wondering if someone could help me out with the pros and cons of it all. An assistance would be much appreciated

Your current setup is more than adequate to run linux. Most of the problems that I have had with Linux and hardware is with newer hardware. You didn't say what video card you have, but I would bet that it would be supported just fine.

I dual boot between Linux and Windows without any problems whatsoever. I like to do a full repartition in order to do this, but you may not want to as you have a current version of Windows. If you don't mind re-installing windows, I would recommend repartitioning. However, there are many partition resizing programs that should be able to aid you.

On partitions, I always like to have at least a Windows partition, A Linux partition and a shared data partition. I have written a pretty basic howto (http://www.gidnetwork.com/b-103.html) that covers some of my partition musings. It is written for a Dell laptop and Slackware, but there may be some things in there that you may find useful.

I run Slackware on everything, but there are many other distributions that you may find easier. To me Slackware is easy, because it keeps things very basic and simple - no gui install, text startup scripts, etc.

The biggest thing that you need to try Linux is a desire to learn about the way an O/S works. Linux is alot of fun as long as you are willing to put in a bit of effort and aren't afraid to make a mistake and maybe even start over :). At first it will seem like a lot of work, but it will become amazingly simple if you stick with it.

Good luck!