Laptop re-partition? Live??

[sweetandy]

My brother's Windows computer completely broke down again, so I had to reinstall the world for him. I took the initiative and left some unpartitioned space, and then after Windows installed Fedora. I told the druid to allow other OSes, so at bootup it gives me three seconds to hit space to select which partition to boot from. Works great. If you don't do anything, it goes to Winsuck, and if you hit Space, you can choose to boot Linux. Perfect.

At my dad's work, they monitor everybody (with Windows) excessively, so he wants me to put Fedora on his Laptop next to his Windows. A couple of questions arise:

A) Is there a specific distrib I should use for the laptop, or will the desktop do fine?

B) Can I repartition the computer without losing his Windows data, to just stick about 8 gigs for Linux on the side?

Here's some info on the laptop:

37.2GB capacity HD:
a. Used 19.1GB
b. Free 18.1 (Yet partitioned for Windows in one solid drive, C)

Pentium4
4 CPU 3.06 Ghz
1.59 Ghz

448MB RAM

HP Compaq nx9010


Thanks for any comments at all on this!

[genesus]

with those specs you can pretty much run any distro you want, though some run much faster on laptops that others...Partition Magic is pretty safe at on the fly repartitioning if you defrag firs, I've done this to many people's computers and never had a problem with it; however, just in case you should back up all of your dad's files. Then you simply shrink the partition and leave the rest as unpartitioned space and let the linux installer you choose repartition, or you repartition with the software provided by your installation cd...should work like a charm...Vector Linux specializes in revitalizing laptops, I run OpenBSD on a few laptops and they are extremely fast, but it is a ***** to install next to another os...basically though, any distro you choose should run like a charm...good luck!