Ok, I'm trying to install Mandrake onto a partition I just made with Partition magic. It asks me if I want to make it without a swap partition... do I need a swap partition? I plan on having a dual boot with Win XP which is already installed on a partition... what should I do?

Another problem I seem to be having... When it is supposed to format my partition, after the selecting partition step, I ALWAYS get an error. it says "mknod failed (dev nill): Operation not permitted"

What does that mean, and how do I fix it?

You should have atleast 3 partitions to install Mandrake. Below is How I usally set mine up:

1) mount point / = 300Mb

2) mount point /swap = 256Mb

3) mount point /user = 3Gb

4) mount point /var = 200Mb

5) mount point /home = 200Mb

I did like this. I divided my hard drive in C:\, D:\, E:\.
In the C, I've installed win XP. Then I runned the Linux Mandrake install and inside there, I remade my partions, without, indeed, formating C ( where I have my OS, winXP). There ( in Mandrake Installation) I've created a Partion for Linux. This partion for Linux, I've divided in 2 partions ( one to Linux itselfs and the other one for swaps ). The swaps partions are very important part of Linux. Usually, the swap partions should be twice size as ur RAM memory ( if u have 128 megas, create a swap of 256 megas ). This will free memory during Linux execution.

Doing like this, u will still have all drives acessed from Windows ( but not the Linux partitions ) and a double boot from the start.