hard drive partition types
 

I know linux cant write to ntfs and can to fat32. however, i just want to know is there any actual advantages of the ext or ext3 file systems? or is it just that linux only works on those 2 file systems?

fat32 is not a unix compatible file system, ext3 is. fat32 can't handle user ownership and everythign else that goes to be required in any unix file system. linux can run on a whole bunch of filesystems, ext, ext2, ext3, reiserfs, reiserfs4, xfs, jfs and others... use ext3.

You are correct in that Linux can write to FAT32 partitions. It's a handy way to share files between windoze and the good OS.

As far as file systems go, ext2 is a very stable non-journaling file system. It's very good for a boot partition and the like. I wouldn't recommend it for your root partition or any partition that contains large amounts of critical data.

ext3 is basically a journaling version of ext2. It's very stable and is the tried and true workhorse of the Linux file systems. The only downside to ext3 is some wasted space if you have a lot of small files as it alocates an entire inode for a small file. Example, say an inode is 1024 bytes. Say the file is 500 bytes. The file wil be allocated to the 1024 resulting in 524 bytes of wasted space.

I use ext3 for the tried and true stability.

reiserfs: a relatively newer journaling file system. It stores files in a structured tree and deals far better with smaller files. It supposedly speeds up disk access due to the way it arranges the files. Has a reputation for being a little less stable due to the way it performs it's journaling although when I used it I never had a problem.

There are other, newer versions of file systems being used and tested. I haven't usedd them and so won't comment.

If you want safe and stable, go with ext3.