I had a question regarding dual boot with windows XP pro and Mandrake 8.2. I have XP installed now on a 20 gig NTFS partition. Now I've read that you don't need to format to make another partition for linux, all's you need is to use FIPS. Now the only prob is that the article was talking about FAT32 partitions not NTFS. What I want to know is will FIPS still work on and NTFS partition, I don't want to have to format if possible. Also if I can do this how big should the Linux partition be? Thanking you in advance.

Last time I checked FIPS did not work with NTFS. If the drive is already partitioned, you can format the partition that windows isn't residing on, and use that for linux, depending on what you're planning to do with Linuxyou could install it on a relatively small bit of space. I used to to dual-boot Win2k and Mandrake 8.1 with mandrake on a 5 Gb partition. If anyone knows any different about FIPS, post cause the last time I messed around with it was well over a year ago, I'm not absolutely certain that is doesn't work with NTFS.