Give an old Windows hand your Linux advice

virtualisation

Depending on what you really want to test and wether you want to decide what distribution you like the most. I would suggest running some distributions in a virtual environment first. ( i've tried all kinds of linux distro's several virtualisation applications and only had some problems with ubuntu(7.4) on vpc, but that was solved by using the alternate install iso).

This will of course be very different from actually running it on real hardware. For starters there shouldn't be any network issues, nor do you have to worry about proprietary hardware drivers. If that is what you want to test, you'll have no choice but choosing something that will install itself to the laptop.

But if you want to see which distro is for you, I'd really recommend you to use virtualisation, if only to experience wether you prefer apt-get, yum or yast.
This way you can also choose to install a server distro for example that doesn't have a gui, if you use that for a while you'll start missing it when back in windows.

An other 'easy' option would be to use a separate HDD if possible. Or to simply create another partition on your windows hard-drive.

Wubi and live-cd's are great as a test of your hardware and all, but they don't do a real installation any justice and you can't get really into it by using those, imho.

Give it time and "play" around

It has been said before and I can only agree with those that have suggested to try out various distributions.

Personally I run Ubuntu on my company's laptop and run Dreamlinux, LinuxMint and Xubuntu Intrepid on my desktop. And to be honest ... each of them has advantages and disadvantages. In the just over two years that I am using Linux now I have tried many, many distributions (yes, some may call me a distro junkie).

But by doing so you find out what your preferences are, you get to know the communities/forums and to what extend they are willing to offer support (or not).

One thing I like to add, consider installing VM software (like VMware Server) and play around with the various distributions. Although specifically graphical capabilities are less in a VM you can check the ease of installation, how it works very easily. And if you are not satisfied, simply dump the VM.

Another candidate

I have always had good luck with SimplyMEPIS. It has good support for drivers. It also uses .deb packages instead of .rpms. www.mepis.org

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is gathering such popular momentum and is improving at such a breathtaking rate that I can't see how you could consider and other distro. Not that it's the best (it's among the best, for sure), but that it exemplifies the modern community-driven Linux experience. If you want to feel what it's like to be part of the future of computing, it's the distro for you. Three years from now running Ubuntu will be mundane, and BSD will be the new Linux.

Follow up on openSUSE... need to get ClearType set up

And here's how: http://tinyurl.com/6rk9fp

Subpixel shading is your friend. Rather than altering Firefox 3, I just changed the default font to one that displays better.

OpenSUSE for me... just ditched Vista

Hi, Preston. I just switched my home laptop, a Lenovo R61, to openSUSE 11. I gave up on Vista after it kept freezing -- not sure if a machine problem or what but it no longer happens on openSUSE. I should say I am real newbie on Linux and tried Ubuntu at one time and just liked openSUSE's interface and installation better (at least the Gnome setup.) I know this is personal taste stuff.

Also note, and perhaps this would make a good writeup, that openSUSE like Ubuntu now offers a boxed kit with tech support: http://en.opensuse.org/Buy_openSUSE

I wish I had that today when my touchpad stopped working. Everthing else works, and I found out I had to tweak some sensitivity settings in the Trackpad control panel to make it work again.

One more thing if you go the openSUSE way. A great tutorial for setting up a bunch of codecs and related multimedia packages: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-opensuse-11

That update -- a somewhat involved process -- made the machine usable for everyday web and media stuff... before that, not so sure.

I'm running the 64-bit version, which I'm not sure is wise when it comes to drivers etc. It is all working though. I'm hoping the auto updating just makes it more rock solid over time.

Consider trying a couple of

Consider trying a couple of distributions until you find one that you like that has full support for the hardware you use on the T41. Laptops can be finicky, with non standard graphics chipsets, built-in webcams, etc.

I'd recommend trying Ubuntu and OpenSUSE. They're well designed, have a nice UI, and support a wide variety of hardware.

My experience

I started with Fedora three years ago. I didn't like it because yum was too hard to make work behind our corporate firewall. It looks to a host of mirror sites, I couldn't get enough holes opened up. I tried Ubuntu two years ago, love at first sight. Synaptics works great through our proxy with my credentials. And debs seem less cantankerous than rpm's.

I have since made Ubuntu my distro of choice, and have helped some others who were Linux noobs to make the switch.

However, I have also heard great things about PCLinuxOS.

The latest Ubuntu lets you install within a Windows partition.