Running linux on a windows laptop

I recently got a Dell Inspiron I6400 T2300 with XP Home edition. Given that it has 2 cores, 120GB harddisk and 1GB RAM, I wanted to try running linux within XP. So, I first downloaded Microsoft’s Virtual Server software which is free but that didn’t let me create virtual servers on XP home edition. Apparently, it only works on XP Professional edition, for which I would have had to shell out another $100 or so. So, I then downloaded VMWare Server 1.0.1, which btw, is also free and it worked fine. I initially had a few issues, as this is the first time I ever ventured into the virtualization space, but things went smoothly. I downloaded Gentoo’s 2006.1 distribution for Linux and now the system is up and running. Performance is pretty decent, I don’t get the feeling I am either running a virtual server when I am in XP or that it’s a virtual server when I am in linux.