I have a USB hard drive, and I want to install linux on it, without over writing my regular computers hard drive, can I install linux via windows virtual 2007 program?
You can run Linux and windows side by side using a simple dual boot. It will be faster and you will be able to use 3D effect. You dont have to format your partition, just resize it. You can use virtualisation software to run linux, but dont use the microsoft virtual pc, it is microsoft, it is not made for running linux. Vmware is probably de best software to run linux inside windows. Virtual box (free) is also good.
I did the oposite and ran XP in a VM... Altough I now ditched that and I'm a Linux only user, I'd still recommend you to mess around with Linux before you actually install it. A Live CD is a good apitiser, and then maybe an install in a VM. If you grasp the Linux way of doing things you go dual boot, to eventually end up where I am, Linux only. For the VM, I allways used VMware Server as VM (on Gentoo Linux), but I removed it in favour of Virtual Box, which IMHO handles the host and the client much better, uses less resources and provides a faster and more stable system (both host as client). And IIRC, Virtual Box can use VMware images too. Don't go for the Windows Virtual Mess, I mean, Machine.
Providing your BIOS allows booting from USB-HDD then it should be a relatively simple exercise to run linux (or any other UNIX variant) from that drive. There are various ways to install linux including via ftp but, the most popular way is to burn an .iso image to a blank CD and then boot from that CD. This is the most newbie-friendly way. You could install linux on to your USB hard drive from a virtual machine running on top of windoze but, you really need to know what you're doing for it to work. If your background is windoze-only then chances are you will not know what to do so I don't recommend this method: stick with the CD install instead. Many linux distros (not all) come in a 'LiveCD' format, ie. the .iso image you burn is a compressed image of a whole distro including the installer application. These LiveCDs allow you to run linux from the CD itself and will not touch your hard drives until you specifically tell it to. Knoppix was the original LiveCD and many others have followed its lead. The most popular is Ubuntu. I would recommend this distro to a seasoned windoze user who is new to linux. Ubuntu's installer is very newbie-friendly but, it's still UNIX so, don't expect it to behave entirely like windoze. That said, you should not find it difficult to use when installing Ubuntu to your USB hard drive. Installing is, of course, entirely optional and as others have said, you may want to stick with just running a few different LiveCDs (or virtual machines) before you decide to install one to your hard drive. I would also like to add that you shouldn't limit your UNIX experience to linux. There are many other UNIX based operating systems that you should explore such as PC-BSD (www.pcbsd.org) and DesktopBSD (www.desktopbsd.org) each with their own strengths and weaknesses. By all means look at linux first, but you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't at least take a look at the alternatives.
I don't want too dual boot my machine. I need to put linux on a laptop hard disk, for an older laptop that has no cd rom drive.
During the installation process you will be asked to format/partition your hard drive(s). Make sure you select the USB one, and automatic partitioning should suffice.
