hello and perhaps some help

Hey everyone! My name is Gina or you can call me G-Dawg (that's my street
name lol) As you can probably guess, I am a newbie to not only the list, but
to Linux as well, hence why I actually subscribed. I've run into a problem
and I'm hoping I can get some help.

About me - I've just started in a network class as per an IT degree with a
concentration in networks, so in my previous class we did a paper about the
different OS and I did one about Windows and Linux. That of course peaked my
interest with Linux and finally, as of today, I suddenly needed to try this
up and coming OS and so here I am!

Now, about my problem - it occured to me today that I didn't want to get rid
of XP (which is what I'm running on my desktop), but yet I didn't really
want to share my desktop with Linux either, for fear there may be a horrible
clash that would happen (and crashing XP twice in one year is an all time
high for me; I'd rather not make it three) So I came up with the idea to
'sample' Linux on my old hard drive from my Packard Bell (yeah, I know)
However, I have run into problems.

I first went with the Suse 10 for Linux and ran into the problem that my
network device could not be detected; I got that repeatedly. Now, I want to
say it was because I downloaded the internet install at a work computer,
burned the image to disk and brought it home. So I have taken the liberty of
installing it on my desktop. Have yet to try it, though I think the outcome
will be the same.

So, frustrated, I stumbled onto ubuntu and saw that not only did it look
ridiculously easy (again, I'm a newbie to Linux and I've heard Linux is not
user-friendly like Windows), I decided to give it a go. I'm currently
downloading the breezy beaver (and really, with a name like that why didn't
I try this frist?) I wanted to try something different, but I have a feeilng
I will be getting the same error message.

As for the specs of my computer, I would like this placed on a second hard
drive NOT the master (so basically the slave) The slave is a Fujitsu limited
with 1.96GB; I am using an internal NIC which is Belkin 2003; NTFS; nVidia
sound card with Hercules drivers....again, I want this to be on the second
drive and theoretically, when I boot from the CD, shouldn't it do what
Windows does and ask which drive I want it on? My computer is set to boot
from the CD, but at least with Suse, it didn't even pick up that I had two
hard drives.

I really want to try Linux and technically, school was nice enough to give
me wonderful copies of XP should I need them, but I really don't want to do
that. I don't want to re-partition my master drive, especially when it took
a while to get everything back I lost the LAST time XP crashed on me. I even
unplugged the master drive and it still said that my network device couldn't
be detected and it went into manual installation, which left me confused, as
nothing happened and it said the same thing.

Okay, so sorry about this very long post, but I truly am hoping to make this
work. Any suggestions are appreciated and even though I am a BIT, please
take the time if possible to explain this as though I'm a five year old. All
the searches I've done for this problem either are too confusing or don't
address my problem and there doesn't seem to be a solution.

Whew! Well, I hope someone can help. Thanks a lot and hope to hear from
everybody on whatever!

Gina
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