Why are so many linux advocates obnoxious as fuck? I have nothing against linux / open soutce software, but it seems like if you ever make any criticism of their OS they tend to go all "M$ fanboy" at you, or make ridiculous ad hominem attacks when they get riled up.
Why? If you are a linux fag, why do you do this? If you don't do this and are a linux fag, why do you think others do it?
#17, I'm not a good guy to ask about that. I use Slackware, which is far too geeky to recommend. There are too many manual steps to get dual booting done, as well as other stuff. This is not to slander the current rel of Slackware; I'm just sayin'.
I've heard Ubuntu being tossed around a lot, which implies some popularity, hence dual-bootery can only be getting done there a lot. You might also try Debian. In a larger sense, try to avoid the more European distros (SUSE and Mandrake?), since the EuroFags don't have to deal with such a strong MicroShit presence like Americans have to, hence less emphasis on dual booting.
Make sure you clearly understand partitioning, at any rate. If you have one hard disk, then you have to decide how to divide it into Windows+LinSwap+Linux+LinHome, etc. Windows partitions tend to fill with crap like Taco-Bell-eatin' Americans, so it could be easy to starve it with a too-small partition. Adding another hard disk (which considering prices, seems well within most budgets) gets around that. Let Windows play on a 20-40GB drive, and then add another one for a great deal of space for Linux fapping. Various drivers should allow you to read and write between partitions ... except my old-fashioned ways leads me to add a standard FAT32 partition to any Windows build simply because it's easy to share data that way between Windows users (none of that NTFS overly-granulated permissions crap) and Linux.
Good luck, Linux Padawan! Using Linux gives you power over your computer, not the other way around with the Dark Side (i.e. any Microsoft OS).