Make sure you installed make, and gcc too (the software development tools)

Use umask to change parititons for all files & folders together, fmask for files, dmask for directories. It is difficult to change the permissions of individual files (look into 'mattrib').

Try running 'modprobe apm' or modprobe acpi'. If those don't work, then you will have to recompile your kernel to enable it.

If you can find a ligtweight desktop environment that has what you need but isn't too big (like gnome/kde), then you're good to go:

icewm
blackbox/fluxbox/openbox
xfce
fvwm2

Linux can work on 386 or greater. Not every distribution can, though, because they optimize for newer cpus. Slackware can run on a 486, and older versions can run on a 386. You need 16mb of ram for a gui in Slack. You will obviuosly not be able to run something fancy like KDE, it will be intolerably slow.

See this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?postid=810587#post810587
You use the image of a bootable floppy to create a bootable cd. Get the image like this:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/bootimagefile.img

You will have to delete the Windows partition and create a Linux one for Fedora. This can be done  during the installation. Make sure you know the partition's name in Linux (don't want to delete the wrong one). 'fdisk -l' will list the partitions.
Whether the swap will be recognized automatically is up to the distribution. I'm not sure if Fedora recognizes swap automatically, but you can tell it which is the swap partition during installation if it doesn't recognize it by itself..

text-editors:
vi
pico
nano
Search for vi howtos if needed.
Next time, backup.

Fedora will probably install grub. If you don't want to lose debian, do this:
install fedora, telling it to put grub in it's root partition.
edit the debian lilo.conf. Add an entry to load from the Fedora partition the same way it is done with Windows partitions. Now, after applying changes, there will be a Fedora entry in lilo that goes to grub. Edit the grub cfg to load Debian. When the grub loads debian fine, boot Fedora and run 'grub-install /dev/hda' to use grub instead of lilo.
For partitions: from what you posted, I can only guess what the partitions' names are. Run 'fdisk -l' to get a more comprehensive description.

What distro are you using? Sometimes the power management can be enabled easily. Otherwise, you will need to recompile your kernel. When recompiling, first leave out acpi support and see if apm works. Then try acpi.

Your modem may be a winmodem... see www.linmodems.org . If you are lucky & it's not, you won't need any drivers.

They are power management systems.
What happens when you run (as root)
apmd
ls /proc/acpi

Why can't you go to a cybercafe and burn it there.

I think grub is far better than lilo, once you get around the different names. Whatever you use, you will need to add an entry to it's cfg file. With lilo, you need to run 'lilo' to apply changes.
The linuxes can share swap.
For more help, please elaborate on your configuration (hds,partitions), the new configuration you plan to have, and whether you want grub or lilo.

Wild guess: your hda1 is mounted over files existing in /boot ?
Unmount your /boot , then look around.

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