installing debian linux

hello, i just bought a new laptop and as usual, it came preinstalled with windows xp. the thing is, ive always wanted to try out linux, so i finally got the debian linux installation cd, and i was reading through the install guide and i have some questions:

1) my laptop was already partitioned, all 60gb in 1 partition, is there any safe way to repartition it to 3 drives? (1 for windows, 1 for linux, 1 for files)

2) can linux AND windows access the 3rd partition? im not sure if there would be any problems with the filesystem...

note: the laptop doesnt have a floppy drive (in the debian install guide, there was a method to safely repartition a drive, but it required making a bootable floppy).

and 1 final question:

i read theres different installations, server/desktop/command line (something like that), i was wondering which 1 i should pick? im going to use the laptop for developing and work in general mainly.. and i might run a few server-programs on it every now and then (nothing too demanding, just a few programs ive been working on).

i was thinking the server install would be fine?

thanks in advance for any help

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1) my laptop was already partitioned, all 60gb in 1 partition, is there any safe way to repartition it to 3 drives? (1 for windows, 1 for linux, 1 for files)

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Well the easy way would be to use fdisk. This would hose your current windows installation though, and you would have to start over. If you want to keep your current windows installation intact, then you would need to resize your windows partition to something smaller in order to make room for the other partitions. The only program I know of that does this is Partition Magic, and there isn't a free version of that program (that I know of).

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2) can linux AND windows access the 3rd partition? im not sure if there would be any problems with the filesystem...

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Yeah, if you format it as FAT32 then they could both read and write to it. You could also format it as ext2, and install a ext2 file system driver for windows.

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i read theres different installations, server/desktop/command line (something like that), i was wondering which 1 i should pick?

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Well if you want a windowing system, I would go for the desktop installation. You can always install whatever server programs you need later on.

thanks for the reply, but i tried installing it a few days back and i ended up with no windows and a commandline linux, so i turned to mandrake, which took 20 minutes as opposed to the day it took for debian to install, and its all working perfectly now :D

for anyone whos interested, theres a tutorial and a bunch of helpful people at http://mandrivausers.org/ (mandrake and linux in general)