Disk re-partitioning before Linux install

[K7AAY]

149GB hd from factory in my Lenovo SL400. Vista's Disk Management snap-in shows this partitioning for Disk 0:

Letter Volume Size Status
-- ----------- ------ -------------------------------------------
S: SERVICE003 1004 MiB Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partiion)
C: SW_Preload 135 GiB Healthy (Boot, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
unallocated 10 GiB recovered from C: w/ Disk Mgt snap-in & by shrinking Q: w/ EASUS Part. Mgr.
Q: Lenovo 6 GiB Healthy (Primary Partition)

1 Should C: be the first partition? Since the first partition is the fastest, sure feels like it would be nice to shuffle S: and C: positions.

2 What's in Q:, anyway? What's the impact of deleting it, if I copy its contents to a DVD-RL?

3 It's my intent to install a Linux (eLive? Kubuntu? pcE17OS 2nd Ed.? Dislike GNOME, fer sure) and I've been given to understand there's a maximum of four (4) Primary Partitions on a hard drive, so how do I overcome that? With extended partitions?


Thank you kindly for your on-topic responses.