[Venkatesh]

Absolutely. Backup before installing Linux. And after. And very very often.

One more thing - make sure that you can recover from your backups as well - all my backups used to be to CDs, but I have recently discovered that I can't read my earliest CD-Rs any longer, namely ones from before 1999.

If you want to get started with Linux, I think that Red Hat Linux 9 or Fedora Core (either 1 or 2) are excellent choices. Everything is already set up for you. I found it quite easy to install Red Hat 7.2 (back when I first started) and immediately I had a development environment, excellent GUI, and office tools (KOffice).

Eventually, you will get annoyed with the fact that Red Hat/Fedora has customized everything just a little, enough to cause frustration to people who like to understand the complete workings of Linux. Right now, I'm very significantly confused by the graphical bootscreen of Fedora Core 2 (how the hell do they do that?).

But yes, backup and good luck!