i love puppy linux.  Great if you only have a little ram.  not sure about duel booting and stuff though,
I can never get my computer to load an os   So i use puppy linux cd to boot the os initially then i can take it out

If you're concerned about the space you should reserve for linux, don't be afraid to make it smaller, especially since you can use your win partition inside linux. I often only have 40-60 GB out of 160 for my main linux partition, and I've never run out of space. Unless you use tons of multimedia on your pc, you should be fine.

And don't be afraid to use simpler distros just because others think that they're not as good. It simply means they're less customizable, which isn't always a bad thing, especially with new users.

I would like Puppy a lot more if it was more popular, but it's not. Honestly, for a low-ram install that actually has a few programs available in package form, I would use debian with LXDE or dwm. You can get them running on extremely low ram. (DSL, anyone?)

I thought Windows took around 6 terabytes of diskspace and Mint about 1 gigabyte?

J/k but I was sure Windows was considerably larger in size, so I would guess its partition is much larger, right?

Well, depends how you'll use Linux and the size of your hard drive. I would say 2/3 of the space for Windows, since Windows and most programs are considerably larger than their equivalent on Linux and you might install more stuff on Linux. If you're gonna spend more time with Windows such as installing the whole Adobe suite and all of your Steam games I would say more like 3/4.

That sounds like it should work perfectly. Have fun!

I would say mint unless you really like Unity. Otherwise, mint has a less nonsensical approach to handling new concepts. LMDE would be even better.

If you've used linux before, maybe you could try Debian. The installation process is about as simple as Mint's nowadays. Ubuntu has simplified their installer to the point of being fully automated, though, so if you really hate the initial install, go with it. (Win XP's was harder than Debian's is now though )

The only complaint I have with debian right now is that the testing version is only about 2 months old, so there are hundreds of updates all the time. The system isn't unstable, but it's kind of annoying, especially considering how often kernel modules are updated, which requires a restart. Mint (not LMDE) and Ubuntu won't have this problem: They'll have 300 updates right after installing, and then a slow trickle until the next release comes out.

Also, Mint won't use Gnome Shell, which is about as bloaty as KDE4 was when it first came out. It will use the improved gdm3 system, though, just with the classic Gnome Desktop. Ubuntu, I believe, has its own desktop manager specifically for unity.

Oh, and it's good to move away from Wubi, regardless of your decision. It causes all sorts of issues, like not having swap, so running out of memory crashes your system.

that sounds like it will work perfectly. i set up a situation exactly like that one a week ago for a friend of mine, and haven't run into any issues yet.