I have a new computer that I built (Windows XP, 160gb hard drive, 512mb of ram) and I would like to partition it to run different OS's. I'm looking at Ubuntu, CentOS and Gentoo(I like to play around with different OS's). I found this product called Partition Commander 9 and I was wondering if it was a very good product. If not what would be good to help me in doing this?

I imagine you'll want to resize the Win partition [after backing up any important data, resizing partitions could be risky] and make some empty ones for your Alternative OSs (Including a small one for a swap partition -- about 1 gig -- the linux' can share it).

I have no opinion about your partitioning software. I use cfdisk, and I've never tried to resize a pertition.

Have used older versions before with no problems. Only had issue with partition magic because it required a patch to understand current system. Kind of dislike the Magic.

One note on mulitple linux distro installs. It would be best for each to be completely indepentant of one anthoer. I would would not use a common partition like /home for the reason other distros might use different ID level for a default user as well as group. Also when you do ones like Redhat/FC/Centos/RHEL you will want to edit the /etc/fstab and change the LABEL= to thier true /dev points.

Brian1

since he has 512 mb of RAM.....so assigning 1 Gb for swap is not advisable.
thats old concept ...."swap = 2 x size of RAM", when the size of main memory(RAM) was not big enough.
512 mb for swap will be more than enough.

( i've only 256mb of RAM and is using 250 mb of swap without any problem)

regards

meh, it's safe advice, even if it is a waste of space. You never know, the OP might be planning on using some RAM intensive apps.
I have 1024mb of ram, and only have a 256mb swap.

I used Partition Commander v1.03 and System Commander 2000 when I first started working with partitions. They worked fine. Although now I usually create a number of partitions with cfdisk when I buy a new disk and avoid resizing them, I do have the Acronis Disk Director Suite. Disk Director includes partitioning tools, a disk editor, disk recovery, and even though it requires Windows for the install, a "live" CD can be created that can be run by itself. I have used it to resize two laptops for Linux installations. It also has a boot manager but I prefer using GRUB lately (previously LILO). I did use the System Commander boot manager for a short time.

Based on one 5Gb partition per Linux I would have 32 distros installed in a 160Gb disk.

I would use a 1Gb swap because believe me it is a lot easy to remember and for rebuilding your partition table should one day you need to do it.

For multi booter forget a common /home just put every directory into a single partition (just nominate a partition for the root "/" and every installer will know what to do the rest).

I find Linux's cfdisk the best partitioning tool, QtParted the best resizing tool and Grub the best boot loader. This is based on the experience of running 170 partitions over 4 hard disks. Don't use Partition Magic with Linux partitions unless you are keen in repairing the partition table yourself.

I would recommend sticking with cfdisk and occasional use of fdisk so that you can use the same procedure to rebuild the partition table if it get damaged.