I am currently running Mandrake 9.2 (which meets all my HCL requirements) on a Dell Inspiron 2500 with 20GB and 256mb RAM. I have ran out of space on my / partition. I could use partition magik? to increase the size of my / parition and decrease my /home partition but instead i have opted to start afresh with a diferent distro ((thinking Fedora 2) but so newbie i dont mind), with Win XP pro dual boot.

My preconceptions are format the entire drive and create a:

7GB FAT32 (so Linux can see it)
7GB ext2?? / parition
512 mb /swap (twice ram size? maybe 256 not sure) parition
100mb /boot partition
5GB /home parition

(Maybe getting too advanced for my own good but should i put /swap on the last bock of cylenders where the hard drive could read it faster?)

1.) Then boot from XP cd and install on FAT32 parition

2.) Then install Linux distro (any suggestions? (dont think Fredora 3 supports my video card (815 chipset))

3.) Configure boot manager?? not sure how

Possibly Mandrake is still best distro for me?

Thanks for any help

hardware support is down to the kernel not any given distribution.

Looks like a good plan for a dual-boot box to me. A couple of points: you *may* get a *tiny* speed boost by putting swap as close to the start of the disk as possible. Not important though. Windows XP is <usage = "loose"> 'designed' to run on NTFS - not sure if you can install on FAT32. Creating a small FAT32 partition to allow data to be shared between OS's is a good idea though.

Make sure you properly understand what you're doing with the bootloader - this is where most folk fall over.

Ah right, thanks guys i'll read up on bootloaders then. Anything else to watch out for?
Since i currently have Mandrake installed (but cant get into x), would it be worth practicing any config settings to help the install run smoothly before i format my drive. If so could you suggest some? (eg Play with current bootloader).
Thanks