I want to install linux in my PC first time alongwith existing winxp. My system is 5 years old running with P4 1.6ghz,160gbHDD,256mb Ram,ATI AGP graphics card. Can anyone recommend a good (ofcourse free) Linux packages available which satisfies following requirements? 1. easy installation (since i am a newbie) 2. must work above configs.
Basically, if you can run XP, you can run linux. If you are after something that is simple to set up to run alongside xp, then ubuntu is probably your best bet. It's the best version, imo, to begin with - simple to set up and use; together with a strong community. It also allows you to try it out with a 'live' version which does not install anything on your machine until you want to.
You can also run Linux from a USB stick or memory card - which is cool, because you can take it with you to your parents/friends/school/work etc... www.pendrivelinux.com/
on the corner of your hard drive shell out 5-20GB of space ( use partition-magic / the partition manager in ubuntu live cd installer << be sure to choose manual mode ) then install linux on that partition. the ubuntu linux cd will find your existing xp and load in its boot loader. so just choose which one you wanna boot everytime you run your pc. this is the best alternative apart from using a live cd.
The two I would reccommend are Ubuntu or Debian. They're both really easy to install, both are easy to use if you're a Linux newbie, and it's easy to get new programmes installed.