Dual-booting Linux and Linux drivers

[DKM1129]

Hi guys I want to dual boot linux on my HP 625 Laptop (2gb ram, Dual core amd athlon) so I have a few questions: 

 

1. Which is the best version of linux(I know Ubuntu is good but is there any alternatives?)?

2. Is there guides online on safely dual booting a PC? (please post links) 

3. Where would I get the relevant drivers for my laptop? 

 

concerning my third question, on the HP driver page they don't have a link or page for drivers for Linux its all for versions of Windows.

 

Thank you in advance for your feedback. 

[lutzee]

Pretty much all drivers come shipped with the distros (nice of them isn't it?)

 

Go trying different distros, see which you like best.

 

And asuming you just have windows installed, nothing else and haven't messed with the partitions you first need to reduce the size of the windows partition down to a suitable size.

This can be dangerous, its strongly advised to do a full defragmentation of your drive before you partition it, It would also be a good idea to back anything important on it before you do.

Once you have the partition reduced you can fill the freed space with another partition that we will install linux to. This is a very easy step, most distros automate the installation process, and will happily replace the boot sector on the drive with the new bootloader (normally GRUB) This will overwrite the windows bootloader (called bootmgr) but if you decide to remove linux you can fix this by running the windows setup disks and requesting any missing things be fixed.

 

Have fun!

[Satlen]

I recommend for a laptop, if you want a fast and lightweight distro to go with either Xubuntu or Lubuntu.  I would recommend going with either of those.  It gets rid of all the slow junk from unity on ubuntu.  As for the ubuntu based versions of linux, they usually have an option in the installer to erase the drive and install, or to install alongside windows (or what ever else you have installed).  So dual booting is not that hard.  I reccomend downlloading this http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/ and using that to make a bootable USB so that you just stick it in the usb port and you can easily try the OS without actually installing it.