you can avoid having to reinstall windows by using partition magic. if your drive is formatted fat32, there should be some other programs out there (google is your friend) to resize a partition (i.e. your windows one) without formatting anything... verynice. once done, insert mandrake CD, reboot computer, install mandrake to empty partition, and well, you have a nix box. it's ridiculously easy with mandrake (as long as your hardware isn't too new)