Install linux on another hard drive

How to install linux on another hard drive?

You can start here to choose a distro : www.distrowatch.com

I personally recommend Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com), it is very user friendly and its user community forums are the Best and most active I have found bar none for answers and guides. I cannot stresss enough how great their forums and wiki are. If you need to know how to do it, the answer is probably there.

It should prompt you to install the grub boot loader (just be sure you read the prompts) which will allow you to choose which OS to boot into.

The current distro of ubuntu is 6.06,Dapper Drake, its comes as an installable live-cd. in other words, you can run it off the cd, or you can click the install icon on the desktop and follow the directions from there =) ..worth noting, running off of live cd is MUCH slower than installed, so don't judge it by it's speed in that setting. installed ubuntu with the GNOME desktop environment is very zippy! (but lets not start the GNOME vs KDE flame wars, just making an observation)

if you are patient you can sign up to have them ship you one, free of charge (they even pay postage), but its just a one-cd download, so not to big a deal (as opposed to some of the 3-6 cd monsters that are common these days)