It's been a while since I installed Linux on real hardware. They used to have Live CDs that you could boot from to make sure it works on your hardware. I should probably do that to start.
Isn't there some sort of "portable" (I forgot the term) variant where you install the OS to a USB flash drive? Then you boot off of that, and you can store your files on there. I should probably do that for the first month, just to be safe.