Buzza I had Red Hat 7.2 7.3 and 8.0 run on Hardware that support only Windows (My motherboard with an on board NIC card and Sound Card).
Trust me, chances are it works, unless you have some realy obsecure Hardware in your system that nobody ever used. Besides you can do a search on the Distro's web site you want to install, and see the details in there.
All major Distros have a list of Supported HW on their Web Site.
As for deleting your Linux partition if you dont like it, YES, you can Delete the Linux Partition. You just need to be carefull not to fuck up anything in there.
If you are a total noob with Linux, go with a popular Distro 1st. Like RedHat 8.0 or the latest Mandrake or Suse.