I want to create a dual boot computer with XP and Slack 11. I was going to split my hard drive into 2 80G partitions (160GB hd). Is that enough space for each OS? Also, if someone could point me in the direction of a good dual boot tutorial, I would greatly appreciate it.

You'll want three partitions at least, the third being for swap. However, you might also want to have a fourth 'common' partition that you can use between the two OSes. You can look in the tutorial section here for help with a dual-boot system, as well as many ideas for partitioning schemes. It's really very simple.

The main issue with how big the partitions need to be is where you are going to store you data. And the data that really takes up space is media files such as mp3.

And of course it is possible that you will find that you don't use XP much at all in the future so leaving half of your drive for it would be a waste.

My personal suggestion would be

40GB for XP
1 or 2 GB for swap
20GB for slackware
The rest could be in FAT32 so you can share the data, but I think that there be in issue with FAT32 partitions greater than 30GB so dividing the rest into 3 or 4 partitions might be good idea.

This also gives you some flexibility for trying different distributions or putting home on a separate partition.

You should also check out what your initial partition set up is. Many PCs come with hidden partitions and you ought to be aware of them before you make irretrievable changes

Why does everybody seem to make swap paritions as big as 1 gb when you will most likely use at most half of it.
Linux can read ntfs pretty good now so there is no reason to make a fat parition for data

Unless M$ changes ntfs (since they are still actively using/developing it for current and future versions of Windows).
Fat32 on the otherhand, is a legacy fs that M$ has all but given up on!

As for 1GB swap partitions, I often questioned the need for it to be that large, until I started using most of the 1GB myself on occasion!!
I guess there is no such thing as having too much memory!

Why do you want to install Slack 11.0 and not 12.0? I'm just curious.

i've been using slack 11 for a while now and it suits what i need to do on it, which is mostly web design and novice apache type work(for school). So i havent really seen a need to go to slack 12.

By the way, thanks everyone for the input!

what the hell do you run?

Well, I don't recall precisely when I chewed up 1.5GB of RAM and almost 1GB of swap space, but it may have been when I tried to do a Knoppix remaster.
Or it may have been when I booted a Live-CD into memory, and ran it from RAM (sweeeettt)!
I have also been known to run Firefox, a DVD player, a terminal or two, a programming IDE + tools, etc
all at the same time.

But all this is irrelevant.
I mean if you have the memory you might as well use it, otherwise you will never know how good Linux can be.
Compare this to Windows, where the more programs you run the less stable it seems to become.
You hear that Billie G.

It's like having a Porsche (don't we all wish we had one) and only driving it in downtown traffic.
What a waste!
You might as well get a moped.

hope this helps. http://proyektos.awardspace.com/inde..._content=slack