I now have Knoppix installed on my hard drive!

I haven't left Windows XP entirely at this point. I can't get online yet with Linux because I don't have a compatible wireless device. I'm planning to get a wireless ethernet bridge. I also need to figure out how to sync my Palm OS device, but I may be using XP for that for awhile yet. Plus there are games I'd still like to play.

I spent some time before trying anything reading posts here and at LinuxQuestions.org. I also used Knoppix in CD mode, tried a few other distros, and made up my mind.

I removed a bunch of unnecessary stuff from my hard drive, defragged like crazy, and then backed up all of my critical files. Once that was finished I used qtparted to resize my NTFS partition and free up some space. I rebooted, made sure XP worked still, then rebooted back to Knoppix. Then I created new partitions and ran the installer. LILO loaded fine. I tried XP first -- no problem. Then rebooted back to Knoppix on the hard drive.

Everything seems to be working fine. Once I get online I'll be transitioning more and more to Linux.

This is probably old hat to many folks here. Exciting for me, though. I have a lot to learn!