Hey Van,
 I used Fedora Core 2 for a while on my ex's computer, and liked it.
I learned a lot from it, I ran it alone on that machine, though, so I can't help with the dual boot.
BTW, the Linux PC is now gone (so is the ex) and I have been thinking of doing the same thing as you want to with the latest Fedora Core 4.
Both my HD's are formatted NTFS on my current PC, so I would have to reformat #2 as FAT32 in order to run Linux.

fedora core 2 is the best one out there red hat is also a very good distribution....

I have used Red Hat Linux and the only drawback was, that I had to boot into Red Hat with a floppy, fortunately there are dist. releases wherein you can boot right into Linux from the selective screen when you power-up your PC. Also The Fedora Project is the free descendant of Red Hat Linux. As most computer enthusiast know, you can have a lotta fun using Linux ( I personally use SuSE now). Here is a link to Linux you may want to take a look at: http://www.linuxiso.org/

TheHalf™

http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php/590/LiveCD-9.1-01.iso

thats the link for the SuSE Live - you just burn the iso to a cd and run it from there that way you can see if you like it before you install it

You don't have much to worry about.  The install programs for most Linux distros will not hose things.  If you install SuSE Pro 9.3, the Yast installer will let you pick the boot loader (LILO or Grub), if you want to use a floppy for boot (to avoid MBR changes), or if you want to boot from the hard drive, etc.  It's pretty flexible.

If you pull SuSE Pro 9.3 off of the mirrors, keep in mind the retail DVD is a little different.  The DVD includes dev tools and other stuff not in the downloadable .iso.  All of the extras on the DVD can be had from various websites.  I usually buy the DVD every 12 months.  It's my way of showing some support.

I prefer SuSE 9.3 Pro and RedHat WS 4.  Both are very professional distributions.  There are dozens of other free distros.  See http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major for a site with a lot of good info on each.

Suse Linux Live CD ran with no problems on my first try.
This has a pretty nice GUI.
Not sure if I would use this version so much, I used the Fedora Core 2 a while back to run an FTP server.
The server side helped me learn the command line interface, permissions, etc.
If I am only going to browse, etc., I will stick with Windows.
But, something different to experiment with.

Hey Van, I'm running a version of linux right now its called Gentoo its a bit more advanced than other most linux distributions but I suggest if you are ready to install a linux OS on your system i would recommend that you install Fedora Core 4 it walks you through the installation and it also partitions the drive for you so it is a pretty simple distribution of linux but at the same time you get to know linux a little bit. By the way I do dual boot with Windows XP home edition the bootloader is called GRUB there is also another one which is called LILO but I think when you install FC 4 that should all be taken 
care of, Im running Gentoo linux with the Gnome Desktop manager but there are also other Desktop manager's in linux