Although I agree with
musicman_ace about how to get the OSs on the system, I realize that you made it clear that you wish to install Linux
first and Win2000
second.
First of all, I would leave the first partition open for Win2000. So partition it as usual but install Linux on the second partition (and maybe your SWAP partition on the third one). If you can pull that off, you're probably good.
Then install Win2000. It's going to load its own bootloader onto the MBR. Because of that, you will need to make some kind of boot disk to get back into Linux. So, here's the steps I would take:
[list=1][*]Create partitions and leave the first one open (maybe 10-20 gigs or whatever you need for win2000)[*]Install Linux[*]I don't know what Linux distro you're going to put on, but I know Red Hat stuff has the mkbootdisk, which will make a bootdisk[*]Reboot and install win2000[*]Reboot into Linux with your bootdisk[*]Most likely your using GRUB, so edit your
/boot/grub/grub.conf file to include
Code:
title Windows 2000
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
[*]Reinstall GRUB onto the MBR:
Code:
grub-install /dev/hda
(An alternative to using GRUB is to use Windows NTloader
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue36/larriera.html )[/list=1]
I believe that should do it (I've omitted details of course). But I really would recommend installing Windows first. As a rule Microsoft products do not know about or care about anything non-Microsoft. This includes things like filesystems and awareness of other OSs. So it want to take over. The best way to approach a multiboot system with Windows then, is to let Windows take over, and then take over it.
Hope that helps a little.
-- the dudeman