If I create a partition with partitionmagic and install ubuntu on that new partition will it autonatically put a menu to select which operatinng system to use on boot?
I honestly would stick with XP for now because dual booting with vista at the present time is really uncharted at the present time. if you are going to do it two seperate HDDs would be best. Install windows on one linux on the other.
I'd reccomend using the Gparted Live CD for this you can find more info here:
This is the distro I use and recommend, Why because it works right out of the box. No need to configure Everything, everything just works. It also comes as a 1 CD install that is a live CD that you can install later if you wish.
as far as i'm concerned there's only two distros that are really worth looking at these days. those are Debian and Ubuntu (a debian derivitave ). though there are other Debian based distros that are quite nice. i'm not particularly experienced in linux but i have been toying for quite some time and with a quite a few distros.