Dual Booting (Win XP ,server 2003 and LINUX)

[abhishek.com]

Hi Guys
This is my first posting and i need ur help
I am new to linux and i want to install Ubuntu 8.10 desktop (or Live cd) or Ubuntu Studio but i am having problem with partioning because i am having 2 OS already installed on my PC (Win XP SP 2 and Server 2003 SP 1) and i am having 5 partitions on my hard disk [two are of 100 GB and three are of 25 GB and one of which drive is empty (25 GB free space)] .
So please tell me how i can create a free space and make partition for linux, all i know is that i have to make two partition one of EXT3 for linux of 8 to 10 GB and another of 3 GB of Swap (as my RAM is 1 GB) but do i need to make this partition primary or logical will be ok, because when i am making partition through Gparted (a tool included in UBUNTU live CD) the options for primary is not coming.
So please help.

Thanks

[jbennet]

You cant have more tha 5 primart partitions, but thats fine. Linux doesnt really care.

Run the ubuntu cd and it will give you tge option to either a) install ubuntu to the free space or b) shrink an existing windows partition and then install ubuntu in the space created. The ubuntu 8.10 (newest) installer includes the functionality in the installer program.

[John A]

>You cant have more tha 5 primart partitions
Actually, on a standard MBR partition table, you can't have more than 4 primary partitions. Even if you add logical partitions to your drive, one of the primary partitions has to be used as an extended partition to house all the logical partitions within it.

The good news is, GRUB can boot the Linux kernel even if it resides in an extended partition, so once you've created enough free (unpartitioned) space on your hard drive, create an extended partition that uses all remaining unpartitioned space, and within that, create any additional partitions you need.

[Selwyn]

HELLO
I would suggest booting your pc into your windows pc then going onto the drive where you wish to install the os and make sure it is empty (so you don't delete any important files etc) then reformat that partition and name it linux.
Once it has finished formatting that partition put your linux distro cd in and restart your pc and choose the drive that you named linux to install the operating system on.
Hope this helps
Dave