Well I had rh9 on my computer, but had major compatibility issues with my wireless network card and other features of my laptop, so does anybody want to make a recommendation for what Linux to use that is easy to use, geared at html development, has a server, and most importantly is compatible.

I also need a recommendation as to what free partition software to use that is for windows, if anybody can help there.

Personally, I never even got RH9 to run on my machine *L*

I had a lot of troble with a LOT of Linux distros, but with Mandrake 9.1, I had every piece of my hardware working (not to the level it'd be runnign in Windows with the right drivers, but decently), and I'd probably reccomend Mandrake 9.1 as one I'd know the be an okay Distro.

However, I've heard nothing but good things about Gentoo linux (I've never used it, mind you, I no longer have a guinea pig machien to try out other OSes on, and I don't really feel like compiling KDE 3.2.0 again, after 6-10 hours of the second compilation :P)

I myself, and I hope mentioning it on a linux forum won't get me lynched, run FreeBSD 5.2.1 (Unix), and I'm pretty happy with it. everything is running pretty well, and I've never had such a fast stable system (for the most part, proftpd has kind of caused some problems), and it becomes more stable daily (I had a few stability issues as a Linux newbie :P)

But yeah, I'd give Gentoo linux a try... mind you, I've never run it, and have heard many horror stories about the installation... and if you descide againt the install, there's always Mandrake 9.1

ok, i found out there's actually a driver for different versions of linux (7.0-7.2) for my wireless card, so that's solved

but what about partitioning devices? right now i really don't mind using my whole hd for 3+ os' as long as I can decide on one at the end :P

i'm running ME right now, and need to partition, because right now me works well as far as finding a good distro (although linux was much better)

Sorry, didn't notice the second part of your post (seeing how incredibly long it was :P, and how short of an attention span I... ooh, shiny.)

Generally, I use fdisk, or the partitioning tool that Windows 2000/XP uses when you install them (Not sure if ME had something similar... but...)

But in one instance (My short lived XP/Mandrake dual-boot), I used the Ranish Partition Manager
http://www.ranish.com/ <- You can get it here I believe.
To my best recollection, it was an awesome tool. made dual booting a breeze (The problem in the dual booting ocured where I always would boot to Windows because I was so much more comfortable with my 6+ years experience with that, and being a Linux n00b.)

Good luck with your Tri-Booting , don't hesitate to e-mail me if you have any trouble, or have any questions (I might not be able to answer many questions, but chances are, if it's broken, I've made the same mistakes before :P... and maybe even found a solution to it (aside from the obvious one, where i just reinstall XP or 2000Pro :P))

Install windows first and use fdisk to just make a windows partition, leave the unused space unpartitioned. If you are going to install freebsd, do it after windows (or at least partition the space with freebsd fdisk), because freebsd has to be on a primary partition. Install Linux last using whatever partition tool your distro uses (I use cfdisk for slackware).

Aye, I did what Kovacs suggests, (But i did it with Windows 2000, and Windows XP), but I didn't suggest it because of Windows ME, It doesn't use the NT BootLoader, so I have no idea how well or unwell it'll allow you to select other Distros at boot (UNless you want to boot each individual chunk of the HD via boot disks, in which case, that'd require the least coersion).

But if you want to give that a shot before employing the Ranish Partition Manager, it'd PROBABLY work :P.

And after both systems are installed, seek out a tool called "BootPart", it copies out the bit of linux code you can attach to your C: drive, so that that flavour of Linux shows up in your OS choices, i.e.

"Windows Millenium Edition"
"Red Hat 9"

"Choose one, or the default on will be chosen in 10 second."
"Choose wisely, because we know whwre you live. You shouldn't have registered with us."
"Your friends, and their larger friends, Microsoft."

But serious , Microsoft is okay *L* Well, Windows, anyway

I am currently using SUSE as my distro of choice when needing to dual boot. The best part in my mind was the ability to repartition my NTFS drives and get that configured properly. I have never enjoyed Red Hat, for various reasons, but am quite comfortable with how SUSE works.

For partitioning I use Partition Magic in windows. The great thing about Partition Magic is that even if you are in windows, you can still read / write to any linux (ext2, ext3, etc..) partitions. Copy files from ext3 to NTFS or vice versa. But the program is not free I got my copy from IRC

Yeah, I've tried out SuSE before, as a guest OS in Virtual PC. It was nice, but because the PC I was running at the time wasn't *nix friendly, it wasn't a plesant experience :P. I'd definently try SuSE again if I was to install Linux again (after giving Gentoo a whirl ).

Nukem> Yeah, I've heard great things about partition magic... never run it before, I'm of the school of thought that "Why should I install an OS, THEN partition the drive?", as I've usually a clean drive before I descide what I want to do (Windows, *nix, dual boot).

I figure soon I'll be running XP BSD dual boot... what with the impending release of Battlefield Vietnam

Only problem with a server/user PC, when i wan to game in Windows, my server'll be down...

I miss my old PIII :O, But now it's gone to a better place (Calgary )

well after hearing a recommendation for mandrake from a close friend, and then reading that gentoo was faster, i think i'll try gentoo, but might do mandrake too as what i plan to do eventually is completely wipe out windows all together

Yeah, I'd reccomend that. I've never run Gentoo, but I do have two friends who do, and they do nothing but praise it , and the "portage" system is similar to the "ports" system of BSD, makes installations a breeze, and eliminates "dependancy hell"

I have Mandrake 9.2 and I like it. I tried some others.

For live distros I tried a lot and Haking is the best(www.hakin9.org). No login just fixe your problem. The others have security built in.

When changing to a larger harddisk I just connected the two hardisks to the computer and booted hakinglive and transfered the files with MC.

This is very incorrect. If I'm not mistaken, ext/ext2/ext3 are the ONLY linux partitions that partition magic supports. No reiserfs for sure. For linux, do NOT use partition magic. Use partition commander! Trust me on this one.

To my knowledge, Ranish Partition Manager supports virtually every form of partition I've ever seen :P...

All of the windows one,s a godo deal of *nix ones, ect.

But it's been a long while since I used it :P... and never have used Partition commander