Hi,

I'm not completely new to linux, I've been playing about with it on my laptop with some success, but now I'm looking at putting it on my main system as part of a dual boot.

1. I install XP first, then linux (I'm going for ubuntu 6.10) is this correct?
2. Is driver support for 64bit linux as good as 32bit?
3. I will have two hard drives, I was planning on using 1 for the operating systems and one for data storage, is this the best way to do it?
4. For my storage partition what is the best file system to format it in?

Thanks for your help.

1). Generally that is the way to do it. Linux will put XP in the boot menu then.
2). It is plugins for programs like Firefox where you may find a problem. Some distro's will install the 32bit version of Firefox instead to prevent this problem (Assuming your laptop uses X86_64 and can run 32 bit programs as well)
3). That is really up to you.
4). You may need to format it with the Win32 filesystem so that both OS's have full access.

This is all opinion of course, and its worth about what you paid for it..

1. As the above poster said, yes.

2. This is the one reason I stay away from the 64bit apps, despite having the hardware to run it. Its just easier(for me) at this point, to stick with 32bit, until 64bit comes around a little better.

3. Now me personally, I have always set up Windows on 1 drive(main), and Linux on a completely separate drive(slave). I'd then back up files from Windows to DVD(mp3's, videos, office files etc..), and just copy them from there to my Linux OS. If for some reason my Linux install torpedo'd, I still had Windows to fall back on. I done this after screwing up a WinMe setup while trying Mandrake. Took a while, but eventually, I just removed Windows entirely and now have Ubuntu 6.10 on my main drive, and my other drive that used to house my Linux trysts, is now an external hard drive backup.

4. I prefer ext3, but if you need Windows and Linux to access a partition, sounds like Fat32 is gonna be the way to go for you.

Here's a helpful 6.10 FAQ if you haven't seen it yet.
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Edgy

IGF

1. Always install Windows first. Allow it only to partition about 15GB of the first drive--leave evertything else blank.

3. I prefer all the OSes on one drive, and data on the others.

4. I used to say FAT32 for shared data. Then I started using ex2fsd. This is a filesystem driver for Windows that makes ext2 (and ext3) files look exactly like Windows files. I'm thinking now that keeping everything in ext3 makes more sense. Caveat: This machine is shared by 3 users, and I need to have file permissions (can't do that in FAT32). Also, 95% of daily work is done in Linux---the SA (me) is the only one who ever boots into Windows.