Nothing fancy here — used Partition Magic to shrink the WinXP C: partition and zap D:, and that's about it. I'm keeping WinXP until I can get everything running perfectly in Linux.
Extremely straightforward. I got the Red Hat Linux 9 CDs, booted from a Vaio PCMCIA CD-ROM drive borrowed from a friend, and did a completely standard install. No tricks required.
And here's where I am currently. Check the hardware chart for updates as I progress; eventually, I'll put my working config examples here. The most important thing to know is that you'll want to install an ACPI-enabled kernel as soon as possible.