You only need one
primary partition, the rest can be logical partitions within the extended partition. I usually create three primary partitions before I start using the logical ones. Windows might want to be installed on a primary, not sure.
For
RAID, check wikipedia (google e.g. for wiki raid). It's a way of combining harddisks to create a larger capapcity disk and/or to add redundancy). You do not need it unless reliability of the system is of utmost importance (server setups usually).
LVM stands for logical volume manager and allows you to expand a partition at a later stage (i.e. run out of space on the /home partition, add a new disk and add it to the LVM). No experience but there might be a problem if it breaks.
Partitioning has the advantage that you will not bring the whole system down if a partition fills up and that it's more likely that you don't necessarily loose data if you have to re-install. The disadvantage is that you will loose space (i.e. /home or my documents partition is full while there is still plenty of space on the root partition)
I'm not familiar with
diskdruid, but I'm quite sure that it's reasonable obvious how to indicate that a partition is primary, extended or logical
The
swap can be shared between the linux distros.
Nowadays it seems to be possible to reliably read/write NTFS. I still don't trust it and therefore have a FAT32 partition for the
shared partition. Others might have a different opinion. I would format it under Windows although one should be able to do it under Linux as well.
Sharing the home directory between two distributions is a tricky business; I strongly advise against it.
First of all, user IDs in the two distro's might not match so one can not access it from within one of the distros.
Further different desktops might interfere with each other's configuration and different versions of software might interfere with each other's configuration.
Examples:
You switch in FC8 to the KDE desktop and next boot into debian (which might use gnome only, not sure). What will happen is that debian will try to load KDE but does not have the necessary files).
If both use different versions of e.g. evolution (an email client), you might run into compatibility issues (different file formats).
Your disk is quite small and therefore I would only create two root partitions and a swap for the Linux part.
I assume that Windows will be your main OS and that FC8 and Deb are there to become familiar with Linux. In that case, I would setup the following scheme
- windows partition, 5 .. 10 GB NTFS (includes programs, pagefile, temp)
- windows my documents, 10 .. 20 GB NTFS (if you have to re-install windows, you don't loose your data)
- shared, optional, size to your liking, FAT32
Assuming 10 GB for WinXP, 15 GB for my documents and 2GB for shared, we're on a total of 27 GB
- swap (2x memory with a max of 1GB)
- linux root partition for FC8
- linux home partition for FC8, preferred but not feasable in my opinion in your setup
- linux root partition for Deb
- linux home partition for Deb, preferred but not feasable in my opinion in your setup
I will make the first three partitions primary and the rest logical.
Subtracting the swap (1 GB) from the available space leaves you with 12 GB for 2 Linux distros.
I don't have experience with either FC8 or Deb, so can not really advise on the size of the partitions. However, FC8 is probably quite big and therefore should get some more space. Debian is probably quite slim and can have a bit less space. I would probably divide the remaining 12 GB into a 7/5 for FC8/Deb.
Others with experience with those distros might be able to advise more accurately.
