[Nottingham] Newbie Questions

[Siddle, James]

Hi,

I work in the Nottingham area and I'm interested in trying out a version of
Linux on my PC at home, but I'm finding it all a bit bewildering. Could
someone help me out by providing answers to the following questions?

Firstly, which distro should I try first? I've heard of SuSE, Mandrake, Red
Hat and others but I can't work out which one to try . . . 

Secondly, is it possible to keep my XP installation and also be able to
access all my XP files from Linux?

Finally, is there anywhere in the Nottingham area that sells the boxed
distros? The Red Hat ISOs (for example) seem to be prohibitively large!

Any help appreciated,

Thanks,

Jim

James Siddle BSc(Hons) MBCS
Software Engineer
Contract Engineering

Telephone: +44 (0) 115 943 2313
Fax: +44 (0) 115 943 4969
E-mail: james.siddle@siemens.com <mailto:james.siddle@siemens.com> 

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