I have windows on my pc, I want to install linux to try it hoping one day to say goodbye to uncle Bill. Which type of partitions I need to create with partition magic before installing a distro?

Thank you

None, Linux is perfectly capable of doing this on it's own. If you want just leave the space desired for linux blank and un-formatted and nothing else.

May I resize in linux partitions created with linux?

Thank you

Depends on he distribution, but, generally, none. That's because most distributions include partitioning software, and will do the appropriate partitioning (under your control) during the install.

For example, I recently bought a Gateway laptop with XP "pre-installed," and, when I installed Fedora 5 from the DVD, the installation "automagically" split the 80 GB NTFS hd into a 40 GB NTFS and a 40 GB Linux drive. (Actually, a 5 Mb FAT, 40GB NTFS, 40 GB Linux "logical volume" containing a swap partition, a boot partition and a root partition. But I just accepeted the defaults during the install to get all that.)

Edit: The one problem I had was setting up the dual boot, since Gateway insists on "restoring" the XP system if the ntloader is not accessed from the boot sector. But you can boot Linux (GRUB, the Linux boot loader, in my case) from the XP boot menu. Directions on "how to" do it can be found in these forums.

Yes you can resize partitions under linux but depends on the filesystem it uses. Example under rieserfs filesystem only supports expanding and shrinking of a partition but does not allow moving the first block. So the start location of the partition will always be where it is. This is using a tool called parted and one can use a gui interface called qtparted. I would research those to learn more on them and see the limits.

With Fedora if you automatically let it create partitions then it uses the LVM scheme. If manully define you can select others like ext2, ext3 or others. ext2 allows better recovery if deleted files. ext3 is better but if you delete a file it is much harder to recover over ext2.

Check out the System Rescue CD. Note to modify a partition it must be unmounted to modify.

Brian1

Running the Mepis linux livecd and installing it from the cd is the way to go, it has qtparted which you can resize, move, create, delete, format partitions. Check out the screenshots at osdir.com or the screencast video at osvids

Or if you want a quick livecd that is just a partition manager and you can resize use GPARTED live cd