I installed Fedora Core 8 on my hard disk. I made a /boot ext3 partition with 100mb. I made a swap partition for 16 gigs. Lastly, I made a / ext3 partition with 60 gigs. Now, I wanna install backtrack2. I'm thinking about using Knoppix to create another ext3 10 gig partition for backtrack2. Do I need to make another /boot and swap partition? Or will backtrack automatically use those /boot and swap partitions?

Also, what is the /boot partition for?
In my understanding the swap file is extra ram. So what's the point of buying lots of ram if u can just convert hard disk space for ram? Are there any drawbacks to using a swap file as opposed to physical ram?

You could have used a better thread title really :/.

You didn't need a separate partition for /boot, but it contains the files needed for booting, most importantly the kernel image. Configuration files for the GRUB bootloader usually also go in /boot (well, usually /boot/grub).

You won't need another swap partition, if you've already got one. Reading/writing from/to disk (which is what happens when the swap partition is used) is a lot slower than reading/writing from/to main memory, so that's why you'd want more RAM.

Swap is extra RAM(virtual memory) but much,much slower,that's way it's better if you have more real RAM.You will never need 16 GB of swap that you have created,it's too much and you need only one swap partition for no matter how many Linux distros you have on the hard disk.Good choice is swap=2xRAM.I've used Backtrack3 and there was LILO as boot loader and if remember correctly there was no option for installing LILO anywhere else then MBR.So if that's the case and if you don't want to install LILO after the OS installation then install it on the MBR and make it boot other operating systems.You don't need /boot partition for that but boot loaders of all the other OSes must be installed on the root partition,not MBR.So where did you install Fedora's boot loader?If it's the only OS that you have then it's on the MBR or /boot partition because otherwise you wouldn't be able to boot into it.I suggest you to use GAG,it's an excellent boot loader with which you can boot 9 different OSes and you just need to install their boot loaders on their root partition.

I have winxp pro and Fedora 8 all on grub.
Fedora's boot loader is in /boot/grub
I'd like to use grub after I install backtrack2.
So then when I install backtrack2 I only create one ext3 root partition. Will there be an option for me to install backtrack2's bootloader on the mbr? Or will it just install the backtrack2 bootloader on the mbr?

Yes just create one ext3 partition.I don't know will there be an option to install Backtrack's boot loader anywhere else then MBR.Check their web site to find out or run the installer and see what are the options,but then you'll maybe have to abort the installation which is not a good idea.Backup whatever is important to you.