Funny Story: I order the Linux One, and up popped XP!

I ordered, from CircuitCity.com the Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch Mini Laptop (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 512 MB RAM, 8 GB Solid State Drive, Sapphire Blue).

It was supposed to be a reconditioned model running a Linpus Linux Lite OS. However, when I turned it on, up popped Windows XP. (It took HOURS to get it going!) I've never heard of this happening before. I called CircuitCity.com and, since they've stopped carrying ANY kind of linux netbook, I asked them to give me a 16 GB SD Card and a 1 GB stick of RAM to compensate for their mess-up, and for having to run Windows on only 512 MB of RAM and an 8 GB hard drive (with XP, the drive arrived 75% full)!

Not surprisingly, they declined my offer and told me they could only take a return. Well, I am not happy, but the thing looks good, and so I MIGHT keep it.

My question: I want to partition the XP with a Linux distro. How do I do that and what distro should I install?

 

Well, every Linux distro I know of has at least some rudimentary partitioning app or even the graphical gparted included. And what distro you should get is pretty much down to personal taste nowadays.
http://distrowatch.com/ (distros)
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ (for booting from usb stick)
The Windows version of the A1 had a hidden partition for restoring XP if anything went wrong - it took up 1-2G of space so I promptly removed that too. Your A1 sounds like the Linux version with XP just slapped on there by some idiot.

 

Back up the XP using Macles' aa1backup utility; you will need a 4GB usb stick for this.

Then, once that is done, erase and wipe the entire drive and install Ubuntu 9.04 or a Linux
of your choice. I can verify that Ubuntu 9.04 runs very well on 512MB RAM and the 8GB
SSD.

You can top it off with the Kernel from Kuki's website, which will work smoother with
less issues than the stock Ubuntu kernel.

Using this setup, you will have very few, if any, issues.

--argee