On 15 June, 19:51, Invisible Man wrote:
I have a laptop with no Windows license (apart from a PC with Windows 7
64 bit and a PC with XP SP3).

Thought I might try Linux. Is Ubuntu the easiest and most stable to
start with?

Any advice on pitfalls etc.

Laptop has a 30 day install of XP on the c drive. Do I use another
partition for the linux software and the third for other files?

TIA for any replies. I have been using MS Windows PCs since 3.1 and
anticipate a steep learning curve.

Download Ubuntu, burn it to a CD (remember you've downloaded an .iso
image, so set the CD burner appropriately).

Reboot the machine (setting boot from CD in setup if necessary), then
select "try ubuntu live distro".

This will take a long time to boot - but it does so only using the
ram, and not touching the hard disk.

Play with it - find out what works and what doesn't - decide if you
like it enough to do a full install.

If you do - the install menu will guide you through setting up a
partition so your machine can do dual boot - after that, you'll be
presented with a menu at switch-on to select windows or ubuntu.