Okay heres the deal...just got thru setting up and dual boot with xp and vista...works great had to do xp on a partition..then start vista install inside xp on a separate partition...so meanwhile ive used Partion Magic to set up a swap partition of 509MB and a 100MB /boot partition for Bintoo along with 29 G ext3 /root partition for it...Ubuntu Ultimate Gamers ive set aside a swap of 2G and 27G ext3 /root partition for it...question: Am i on the right track, as i'm thinking install Bintoo 1st and then install Ubuntu so itll read everything before it? Fingers crossed lol.

More or less, I don't know what bintoo is but if it's Linux, the swap can be shared by as many Linux as you install. It don't really matter which Linux goes first, but you should have a shared partition for your data to be accessible by all eliminating separate /home partitions, NTFS preferably because with ntfs-3g it's easy and safe to read & write to it from Linux. Smaller / partitions do help performance a little, I have 15GB each for two XP's (one casual use, the other expendible "tester"), I start with 10GB for Linux, unless you install the CD/DVD to the drive, that is adequate, you may want to go to 12GB if you feel you'll load one up with software or plan on keeping all downloads in their caches, but those should be transferred to the data partition. When you have more than one Linux, you can spread the software, but that is more beneficial for Windows as the more you load them up the slower they get.

off-topic: Why Bintoo?

well after further research ive found alot of ppl complaining about Bintoo and a few about Gentoo as well so...figure my best bet is Sabayon 3.26 64 as I am running a 2.2GHz HP Athlon 64 X2 with 250G SATA drive and onboard NVIDIA 6150LE video..and btw thanks for the info about the swap I didnt realize you only need 1 swap file for linux distros to share..cool even

Because /home dirs. function as both "Documents" & "Settings" they are not compatible between distros. Usually not compatible between releases of the same distro. You can link any data containing sub-dirs (like "Documents" & "Pictures") to common external areas.

I know this issue has been raised here before, suggest searching the fora for more details.

Also, consider VM's of Linux inside "Winders (tm)" -- it's much easier to install & has fewer driver issues, especially in laptops.

Finally, I'll trust GNU/Linux' ability to write NTFS when I see the pkg. in Debian Stable.

I have just replaced Mandriva with Sabayon on my desktop. I am very, very impressed so far! Everything "just works" and it comes with every Linux software package in the known universe. Plus it has the most amazing 3D and animation effects on the desktop. (if you like that sort of thing?).

Totally agree the 3D is awesome Plus i found a way to make it work... triple boot that is: Sabayon 3.3, Ubuntu Gamer's, and XP...you have to have a / ext3 drive and swap for both linux distros...start Sabayon install first and remember what partitions you use, then install XP, or boot with XP CD and use fixmbr in Recovery console like I had to since XP was already there...whew and finally install Ubuntu last on the remaining unused swap and / ext3 partition...wow what a blast i'll be having now Vista eat this

Are you saying you're using 2 swap partitions?

Yeah you don't need more than one swap partition for multiple distros, better to have just one large one. Example: If you run 2GB of memory then have a swap partition of at least that size [unless you are very short of disk space]. You can of course run a couple of 1GB swap partitions if you want to - to utilize smaller areas, for example on different disks. Just make sure your distros pick them both up in the fstab file, or edit it yourself.

I multi-boot XP and about 8 linux distros, using grub. I employ a dedicated boot partition which contains directories like /Mep, /SuSE, /Ark, /Deb/, /FC6, /Ubu, /Gen2, /Sab; etc to hold the different kernels and ramdisk images. Note that for some older BIOSes you need to put your boot partition at or near the start of your harddisk, or grub might not be able to reach it and you will get GRUB ERROR 11. This partition can be small - usually 100MB is more than enough; OR you can make it larger and use the extra space as an area of common storage.

I also use a common /home partition but with different user names for each distro, like: user-m, user-s, user-a, user-d, user-f, user-u, user-g2, user-sl; so that the user directories on /home are all kept separate. My /boot partition contains /grub and of course menu.lst. I edit menu.lst manually to add new distros to the boot menu. I never let a new distro write to the MBR [I tell it to write to the Partition Sector instead] That way it can create a menu.lst file on the distro root partition without over-writing my menu.lst on my boot partition. I can use the menu.lst the installer writes to copy [with some path changes] when I edit the menu.lst of the boot partition. The same if I upgrade one of my distro's kernels, because the upgrade won't automatically put the kernel in my boot partition [which is called /boot-all, not /boot] or automatically "stuff up" my menu.lst.

This way I don't lose my grub boot setup, my MBR doesn't get trashed, and I don't need to use "fixmbr".
This is a thumb-nail sketch, but I can expand on the detail if anyone wants. Hope this helps someone.