I am awaiting delivery of a new laptop with a large hdd. I plan to dual boot win xp home.
My question is once windows is installed and I install Slackware11, creating the respective partitions, can I share the /home partition in Slack with Windows, namely use the same partition for data in both os's, or will I have to create seperate data partitions for each.
If so which file system will I need to use. My win os partition will be ntfs.
Hope this makes sense

the safest bet is with a vfat partition just for share your data.
reiserfs is for your linux, and ntfs is for your windowsXP system, they both can read the vfat file system. linux need the vfat module although.

You will need separate partitions. Linux can access fat32 partitions, but it can't be installed to one. Linux can read from NTFS partitions, but writing to NTFS is problematic at best. If you want to be able to read and write data from both OSes, you will need 3 partitions at least (4 including swap): an NTFS partition to install Windows, an ext3/reiserfs/other partition to install Linux, and a FAT32 partition.

Thanks very much. Fat32 for home it is then.

The best solution IMO would look like this:
ntfs - windows base partition
fat32 - partition to exchange data between OS
reiserfs or ext3 - base partition for Slack
swap - swap partition for Slack

I would recommend also creating separate partition for Your /home dir. It really makes Your life simpler Don't use fat32 for Your home directory. Imagine when You have virus on Windoze which will destroy data on fat32 partition. You will loose Windoze and Your home on Slack


@Gethyn

No, Linux CAN be installed on fat32 partition but it's not recommended

Ummmm! Good point about virus.
So if I create a fat32 partition for windows data and a /home partition for linux (a linux fs) I will still be able to move data from /home to the windows data partition, but not other way round??? Is that right?

Thanks again

You need to look at this software
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

cheers

Anyone got some advice on using kernel mode ext2 drivers for winxp?

That's what I do, just mount my ext3 /home partition on windows with this driver.

It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes

^ thats what worries me the most. If windows has full access then I wouldnt use it. I dont trust Windows

shaman66: Are you *sure* that Linux can be installed to fat32? It's the first I've heard of it. Since fat32 doesn't support ugw permissions on files, or symlinks, or case-sensitive filenames, I would be very surprised if it worked. On top of that, pretty much all distros ship with vfat as a kernel module, rather than directly built into the kernel. This means that the root partition couldn't be a fat32 partition in practice, without using a different kernel. While it *might* theoretically be possible to install Linux on a fat32 partition, I don't know of any distro that would allow this.

captain_chaos, here's an attempt to clarify: in Windows, you can write to the Windows drive, and to the fat32 partition. If you use a program such as explore2fs or yareg you can READ from Linux partitions, but you won't be able to write to them*. In Linux, you will be able to write to any Linux partitions, and the fat32 partition. You will be able to READ from NTFS partitions, but not write (it is actually possible to write to them to in some sense, but I strongly advise against this unless you like data loss).

*the ext2 drivers mentioned by randomsel would allow you to write, but I'd avoid them personally.

Okey dokey! Thanks again. What I'll do then is if I need to move stuff then I'll use a pen drive. Better safe than sorry

I've been told this is the best software by many, and they all said they haven't had any problems with it.

www.fs-driver.org

I want the linux partitions to be read only in windows, so that a windows virus is not able to harm the linux partitions. is that possible with the fs-driver?

Which is better? explore2fs or fs-driver? I've heard a lot of good things about both of them.

You can't use a FAT for $HOME, unless you are using umsdos file system(see zipslack). However, support for umsdos is not available in kernel 2.6 so setting up that way is not very forward-looking.
I'd just keep separate partitions and put a link to the FAT inside your $HOME or whatever.