I have an Acer 8920G laptop, which came preinstalled with "Acer InstantOn Arcade", whih is essentially a lightweight Windows XP installation which is always hibernating and loads Acer's alternative to Media Center. It is loaded by pressing a special Arcade button on the keyboard, basically a separate power button. I am aware that previous versions of the InstantOn used Linux, but this one is definitely XP.

So on to the question: I want to install Linux (possibly Ubuntu, maybe Fedora) on a partition. Will the GRUB bootloader render the InstantOn Arcade unusable? If so, would there be any way to get it back? (Alternatively, could the separate power button be tied to the Linux installation?)

Many thanks

Robert