I've installed win2k in my system and now i need to install linux. Can anyone guide me how to do it.

I need the basic points which needs to be taken care before installing linux.

What distro and version of linux are you planning on installing? Have you considered using a 'Virtual Machine' such as VMware or Virtual PC? If you must dual boot, I would recommend you get a 3rd party boot loader, such as PowerQuest's BootMagic... Bare minimum though, there will be a boot loader on most builds of linux, so all you would need to do is resize your current partition, if applicable. Hope that gets you started.. If you need more information, let me know. Best of luck.

Oh I'm sorry... One more important thing: Before you do anything major involving partitions, MAKE A BACKUP!!

I am planning to installing red hat linux 7.0. It seems bootmagic has been discontinued as a stand alone product. Now it is a feature of partitionmagic.

Does the trial software will be useful?

Red Hat 7.0? The current version is 7.3, with 7.4 in beta now. Was there a reason for choosing an older version? Anyway, I believe you are correct, BootMagic is included with PartitionMagic. It's not really necessary, but if you do frequent os installation or partition changes, it's a worthwhile tool. I believe the trial versions of PartitionMagic are read-only, so that probably wouldn't work for you. I do know, however, that both VMware and Virtual PC offer trial versions, with full functionality, if you're interested in going that route. I first installed linux in a virutal machine, so that i could become more comfortable with it before I made physical changes to any partitions.

I've somehow succesfully installed linux. But while starting the computer i am not getting the option to select the os which needs to be started.

Linux is getting started only if i use linux boot floopy otherwise win2000 is getting started.

Any help

Try using your boot floppy and boot into Linux. Logon as ROOT and open a console (command prompt). Next run LILO. This should put LILO in your boot sector after LILO scans for other OS's on your system.
Good Luck. I know this can be done because I was duel booting W2K with Mandrake 7.2 awhile back.