Dual boot between the preinstalled Vista and Linux

[gladfan3]

I am thinking of installing dual boot between the preinstalled vista and Linux, to do this I would need to repartition the hard drive and reinstall vista which I donâ??t have the disc for as I only have recovery.

Assuming that the actual OS is on the machine in a hidden partition is this possible to do as if I change the partition layout wont I loose the recovery data. Also if it is possible is here a recommended distribution to use.

[vug]

As far as I know the recovery system resides in a hided partition.
On my machine it is /dev/sda1

After this partition (the remaining rest ) there is one great partition with Vista on it.
On my machine it is /dev/sda2

You may resize (i.e. minimize) /dev/sda2 with the partition tool of your distri.
Then create an extended partition /dev/sda3

In /dev/sda3 you may create the partitions for your Linux System(s)

On my machine there was no need to reinstall Vista; dual boot works fine.
After resizing the Vista partition with the partition tool of opensuse 10.2 Vista performed a file system check