XP machine NEEDS linux now - Help?

Hi, Got a machine running a german version of winXP and I need to get Suse 8 on it right away. It is my intention to : re-partitiion the XP drive without damaging the existing data, making a Suse partition and a SWAP partition. The machine is a hand-made jobbee about which I only know that it is running an Nvidea video card. I would like to then install Suse 8.0 in the new partition and LILO. Is there something stopping me from doing this? Since I have never done this on XP (and it's been a long time since W95!) can anyone offer some step by step help with the partitioning process? Thanks, Nick