I need help please for a Red Hat 7.0 / Win XP Dual-install
 

1. It depends - you can get away with / and swap=RAM size, you can also to make separate partitions for /boot can be as large as 30Mb (must be first partition because RH7.0 includes old version of lilo that requires the /boot to be in the first 1024 cilenders (aprox 8Mb)), /usr (this is where almost all you programs and app execs would be, so make it as large as you can afford), /var (this one is getting filled up very quickly because of log files, so if you gonna run a couple of servers make it >1 Gb), /tmp (make it around 1G and you'll be ok, for instance if you download 3 files 650Mb each simultaneously 1G won't be enough on fast connection), /home (this is where users' home directories are) 5G is enough if you are not gonna store tons of mp3's there. There are also can be /opt, /home2 and so on, just don't make a separate partition for /etc, /lib, /sbin, /bin.
2. MS always tends to accuire first place on your system, so install XP first and then safly install RH
3. If you user NTFS you won't be able to write to this partition from linux, though if kernel is compiled with NTFS support you will be able to see contents of your NTFS partition.
4. see http://www.benchtest.com/dual_nt_linux.html
5. Opps, this is a tedious process, that requires you sitting in front of your PC and typing everything you're doing and getting replys (believe it or not it won't work this way and it is very time consuming), instead focus on what do you need your machine for, for instance, if it is going to be a webserver exposed to the internet you might want to make sure there are no development tools installed, if you plan to download stuff and install on your system you would need gcc compilers, make and other development tools.
6. You're welcome any time.

1. If you're looking for 50-50 split, then go for it.

2. Order of partitions, eh? This could get a little complicated, but hang on in there. Windows always wants to be on the 1st primary partition on the primary master (hda1 in Linux terminology). You can actually have the last partition call itself the 1st one and Windows will be happy, but it's more hassle than it's worth. I would advise that you create 1 Windows partition (vfat or ntfs) that is 7.5Gb, then a small Linux partition (before the 8Gb marker, 1024th cylinder technically) that will be your boot partition, and then after that, you can do whatever you will.

3. NTFS is currently read-only in Linux. RH 7.0, being quite old, will probably not support it natively immediately, so you'd either have to go for a newer version of RH (7.3 is now out), or simply download and compile yourself a new kernel. Unless you really need to use Windows with NTFS, I would go for Fat32.

4. If RH doesn't automagically find Windows, then getting it to boot Windows is really quite easy. You'd need to boot into Linux, log in as root, edit the file /etc/lilo.conf and add an entry for Windows (there are many, many threads on this site about lilo.conf entries) and then re-run lilo. This works for both fat32 and ntfs based Windows.

5. If you do a custom install, of course we'll help, but also, please make use of the search facility on this site.

6. That's OK. We were all new to Linux, once.

With the order or partitions. Can I make a WinXP that is less than 8 gig and then make the linux partition. And then make the rest XP again?

If so, will XP be able to recognize that second XP partition as part of the same drive, or will it set it up as C:\ and D:\?

I believe that XP is still quite lazy about its partitioning...which is actually a good thing. Since Windows assigns each Win partition a different 'drive letter' (unless you want to get into LVM), so you could give the 1st partition to Windows, the last partition to Windows and everything in between to Linux, and Windows should still be absolutely fine.

As I said, though. RH7.0 is getting quite old, now. If you can, try and go for a newer one (but avoid 7.1 like the plague).