I've just ordered the disks for Mandrake 10 Official and then saw all the problems people have had with regards to booting one after the other. As i'm new to Linux, could someone recommend the best thing to do first? Should I partition the hard disk into 2 equal sections with a primary partition using fdisk on a win 98 floppy and put xp on one and linux on the other? Which one should i install first? I read XP first. I'm far from an expert but can work my way round fdisk and things. Should I create 3 sections with partitions - one for xp, one for linux and one for data storage?

Help! Sorry if this sounds very amateur, but I'm keen to learn!!!

Thanks in advance!

I would first setup XP completely. this means just create one (or 2) XP partitions and leave some disc space unpartitioned. install XP completely. then use mandrake setup to partition the rest of the hardisk with at least two partitions (root and swap). install mandrake (I don't know the mandrake setup...) mandrake will overwrite the winXP bootloader, maybe madrake detects the win xp install and adds it to the bootloader, maybe you have to add it yourself after the mandrake installation, so you can choose wich OS to load... should work.

greetz,
.-=~ iluvatar ~=-.

it's a good idea to have a fat32 partition for data, that you will be able to access from both XP and Linux. Linux will read NTFS partitions but can't write on them

I have the setup described by iluvatar. Works like clockwork.

Great, thanks. I'll use the Fat32 for data then. Would you suggest putting a primary one in to separate windows and linux and then a secondary partition for the fat 32 section - i.e. divide it into thirds?