Thinking of trying Ubuntu Linux, some questions!

Hmm, good questions. Also, Ubuntu is a good choice because it is up to date, doesn't try to sell you anything and has a great community. More advanced users might want Gentoo. SuSE is also good, but Fedora is a bit buggy for my tastes. Red Hat considers it a test bed for their server software and it tends to get abused a bit IMHO.

My best advice is to hit the Ubuntu Forums. Lots of these questions can be found there with good answers.

As for your machine, I have very similar hardware and everything works. BT I have not played with much, but it recognized my BT mouse.

Dual boot: Install windows first, then linux. 10G for windows might be thin if you have lots of games. Install windows on the full HD and put the games/software you want on it and then calculate how much extra room you want for expansion later. You can then resize it when you install linux. I would put linux on 3 partitions. One for the main OS, one for the swap file, and one for your /home (data files). Maybe 5-10 for linux, 1-2 G for the swap and the rest (largest) for /home. The main benefit is an easier reinstall/upgrade path. Be sure to backup /home before doing anything like that anyway.

Linux will read your ntfs system, but not write to it. Windows can be set to read ext3 I believe. Dig a bit on that one, but I remember seeing some solutions, some good some not so good. Both OS's can R/W to fat32, but that has some security issues. I use my usb memory stick if I need to R/W to both OS's (seldom).

Be sure to check the forums for dual boot options and do what is best for your situation.

I have yet to find a quickset for linux, but you can set the keys manually to do what you want. It looks fairly simple, but I have yet to do it. Search for install guides for your particular laptop. There are some guide here too. LED's are pretty much run by BIOS for me and I am happy, so I never looked for tools for those. You *might* find them if you look.

Gaming? I would recommend using your windows partition for that, but NWN and UT2k4 work well for me (native linux games). I have not dabbled in wine or similar. WoW has lots of posts and seems to run with a patched version of wine. Starcraft might be iffy. Oblivion can install, but that is about it.

I would just install the games you want on Windows. That is the OS they were designed for and will run best on.

Keep us posted on your results and if you find anything new!

If your interested in tyring out Ubuntu withhout having to reformat/re-install your current os, get a copy of the free VMware player from www.vmware.com, and download the pre built Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) virtual machine. Extremely pain free way of trying out Ubuntu, or any other OS that you might want to take a look at. You won't be playing games with this setup, but you can get used to the OS before comitting your time to rebuilding your PC only to find out later you don't really like it.

To be blunt, gaming support under linux sucks. If it isn't native, don't count on it working for long (every patch seems to break it), and your not going to get all the eye candy you would under XP. Most games that run under Cedega or Wine use the absolute lowest version of DirectX features that they can get away with. If it's an opengl engine, you can get a decent experience. And just because cedega lists it as supported, doesn't mean it actually works. I'd suggest reading through thier support forums for an idea of what your getting into trying to run games on linux.

If you set aside 60GB for Ubuntu, you may have a lot let then 10GB for you Windows partition. My guess would be 6GB or 7GB left.