I had Fedora for a while, It used KDE as it's windowing system, which i never really took to. That;s a matter of personal preference, i know people who don't like Gnome (Ubuntu default), The underlying OS is still Linux and Linux is petty much the same whatever the flavour
Both Ubuntu and fedora have LiveCds available – run OS from CD without making any changes to the current machine. If you have any doubts about what youre doing, you should use them. Apparently you can configure the Ubuntu one (so probably the fedora one as well) to save apps and data to a usb stick. I never managed that, but did commit to Ununtu fairly quickly..

Oh and the reason for using Linux Partition manager to shring the Windows partition is because it's minimum size for a system partition is fekkin huge.

If you dual boot as above (doesn't need to be Ubuntu) then, if you've had enough of Linux, you can boot to the Windows, use disk manager to delete the ext3 (or Unknown) partition. IIRC, you can then grow the NTFS or FAT32 partition into the free space. Done.
I did have a bit of dicking about to do to get wireless working on my laptop, but used the cable connection to connect to the internet and used the forums to get it sorted.
These are the reasons for using the LiveCD first and seeing how you get on.

yes indeedee.
use Ubuntu – it's a doddle
download a LiveCD and boot off that, it gives you a chance to dick about but won't let you save changes or downloaded apps
when you're ready to go, install it
allow 20-30 gb for your windoze partition and format the rest as ext3
the ubuntu installation should see the windoze installation and use grub to create a boot menu with 4 options, 1 ubuntu run time, 2 ubuntu maintenance and 1 for windoze. Ubuntu run should be the default.
windoze should still be intact.

The reason to use ubuntu is this rather excellent book[/url]

I just do not subscribe to the "its addictive, its not their fault" doctrine I'm afraid.

<gasp> you mean, you really mean that people should take some kind of responsibility for their own actions??? Good grief what's the world coming to?

So, no good friends to rely on.

Exactly, one of the "benefits" of membership of the Special Brew Club

I'd love to know the work history at 22 of a lot of the pious posters in this thread. How many of them missed a morning after a session at the rugby club.

..and more to the point how many were sacked because of being p155heads. Not very many, I'd guess

They'd be afraid to ask in case some pious needledick like yourself took offence and referred them to DMA.

I don't have a clue what DMA is, because I'm fortunate enough to have stuck in at school and not have to deal with this scum, other than when it tries begging 20p forracuppatea.

I'd hate to live in your world.

You do, just the lower echelons of it.

His **** family and friends for a start

"family" will be mummy who spent 10 years watching him drink himself to death?
friends will be..? Pi55heads aren't the most popular people. In fact, other than other pi55heads, no-one really likes them. And in this case, this guy had, once, had a job, and got sacked because of his drinking. So now, in his 20's he's never had a job to speak of, so not likely to ever have another one because the time when you learn the base skills that form your working future has gone and the only skills he developed were putting away Special Brew and waking up with a hangover. All of which looks like a career in smelling of p1sh and knowing his rights in the Jobcentre, with specialisms in "borrowing 20p furracuppatea". No loss to anyone.