I installed RedHat Lnux 9.0 a few days ago. I have a dual boot with Windows XP and Linux. My hd looks like this:

partition one is about 5gb and is used for windows xp and windows programs (fat32), primary partition

partition two is the /boot partition of linux (75mb) and is ext3, primary partition


partition three is the linux swap partition, about 512mb of size and is included in a logical partition

partition four is the /root partition of linux and contains redhat and programs. it is ext3 and together with partition three in a logical partition.(about 5gb)

partition five is a fat32 used as backup drive. This drive contains my important files. it is a primary partition and about 8,5gb in size.

in linux I mount the backup drive and winxp drive for read and write, but mostly only uses the backup drive. I nearly store all files I use on the backup drive I once created when windows broke down. In windows I installed this service: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm to be able to read my ext3 file systems (read: /root directory).

For right now I prefer windows to do the programming in since I just started programming in c++/win32/directx, but I use linux for office use, school, internet, chat, video etc.

It works great, I installed the inux bootloader on the /boot partition so the MBR uses the ntloader (windows xp). I used this tutorial to set up my dual boot: http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

I haven''t tried out any other linux distribution so I can''t say which I like most, but always liked the looks of RedHat. Also, when I looked for programs for linux I most of the time found an rpm built for a redhat distribution and not or the other linux distribution, therefor I decided to use RedHat Linux 9.0

I wish you good luck with your attempt to use linux no matter which distribution because i think they are all great.

DaakuMaujii