Sorry if i appeared lazy not just googling it myself. In any case done a fair amount of reading and am going to start by installing CentOS 5 alongside Windows Xp on my laptop. I;m a bit fearful about damaging the laptop in terms of having on re-install Xp if it all goes pearshape. In any case CentOS has a number of install options i think dependent on processer i.e. X86 or i386 - any idea which one i need to choose or how i find out which one i choose?

Also once i've created the HD partition on my laptop and burned the CentOS 5 ISO boot disc is this used to install the OS on the newly partitioned HD space after which time i wont need to use the boot disk again?