Regarding your statement that IDE disks only support four partitions in the partition table, if you want to divide your drive up further, why don't you use an extended partition containing logical drives? Also, if you want an easy installation, trythe boxed Red Hat 7.2. I set that up on a friend's laptop the other day, just to see how it would go. It boots directly from the CD (no floppy required), and if you choose the automatic installation, it even partitions the drive for you.