Dual Boot OS for Netbook

Ahoy there, good people of this Giant Bomb forum-opolis.

I decided to buy my father's Netbook (An Advent 4213, by the way) for college which currently comes pre-loaded with Windows XP. I've decided I will install Linpus Linux, but I'd like to retain Windows XP for professional use when I'm not taking notes. The streamlined interface for Linpus should come in handy for lessons, I hope.

Could anyone provide any help on Dual Booting so I can keep both Operating Systems? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Unless I'm mistaken, so long as you install Linpus correctly on that machine and have the hard drive partitioned for it, your laptop should automatically ask you which OS to boot while it's still at the BIOS. Now if you need help installing it and getting to that point, then that's a whole other can of beans entirely.

Ahh. I thought there were some preliminary partitioning things you had to sort out before you installed it.

Thanks, should be fine to run.

There are some Linux distros which let you install straight to a conventional Windows partition, I believe, but that gets into funky territory. So yeah, you'll probably end up partitioning during the installation, but other than that, it should be fine.