hi im just trying to install slackware and i wanted to know if i should create another partition to swap files with my windows computer. my linux computer has a 40gb hard drive. do i need this swapping partition for windows. my friend told me that linux cannot write to ntfs, but it can read from ntfs? i just want something along the lines of a file swapping logical hard drive. if windows cannot see linux filesystem do i have to make the swapping partition fat32? im in the middle of fdisk, if fat32 is the way to go then which file system is it in the fdisk interface? thanks for your help

Your friend is right (as far as I know) and linux cannot write to NTFS for some reason. What you might want to do is what you just said: make a fat32 partiton. You have NTFS, so you are probably running either OS/2, NT, 2K, or XP. Most likely XP?

As far as the filesystem, I don't remember the number, maybe one of the more experienced linux users can answer that for you

Your friend is mostly right. Linux writing to NTFS is experimental and really not worth the risk, so Linux essentially can't write to NTFS. Windows also can't (to my knowledge) see any type of Linux partition.

Back in the day when I had Windows, I did use a small FAT32 partition to facilitate transferring files between OSs. The partition I used was less than 1 GB, and even that was overkill.

I suggest you use cfdisk instead of fdisk. It's quite a bit easier to use, especially if you're new to Linux. It's definitely easier to find file system types in cfdisk.

Phathead

0B is FAT32

I'd still take Phathead's advice and just use cfdisk though.