Lately many are going with ubuntu 6.10 version that comes with GParted for resizing and deletion options as well as creating new partitions for various types of OSs. One way to determine which version is right for you is to try out a few live for cd distros where you simply boot up with a self contained OS on removable with nothing installed directly to the hard drive.
Fpr direct installation and even dual booting Windows along with Linux you will want to burn GParted live for cd's iso image to a cd-r to make up the bootable disk. The latest platform independent version 0.3.3.0 is found among the long list at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...kage_id=173828
GParted will easily remove the current primary on the notebook there. But even to download full versions of distros you will need a cd writer or dvd burner for writing the total amount of files to disk. Mandrake and SUSe are also two other versions to think about besides Darnsmall and PCLinux.