Dual Booting (Win XP ,server 2003 and LINUX)

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

delete one of your existing partitions (or resize one of them), and use "largets continuous free space". it will be installed there. I'm not sure exactly why you need specifically 3gb of swap, 1gb of ram is plenty to run ubuntu...

and what do you mean by "primary". You can always edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to specify your default OS (not sure this is what you mean though...)

By "primary" he means primary partition vs extended partition. If your hard disk have a IBM-compatible MBR, you can only have 4 primary partitions. If you want more than 4 primary partitions, you need to take one of these so it will hold extended partitions. You can read a bit more about this here.

As for multiboot scheme, here's an interesting link. http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showt...hreadid=143973.

But basically, you should take the empty partition, split it in two partitions (with either gparted or cfdisk -- be sure to run them as root with gksudo and sudo respectively) if it's already an extended partition. If it's a primary partition you might have some trouble. Install Linux on one of the new partition and use the other as a swap and you'll be done. Now, when your computer will boot, you'll have options to choose which operating system you want to use.

Hi both of u
Thanks for ur great help.
One of my friend told me that along with EXT3 and swap partition also create a "\boot" partition ,is it actually required.

Also please clarify me that i can install Ubuntu studio on logical drive or not with two OS already.

Thanks

And please tell me more about " Root Access with sudo and gksudo"

I suggest that you spend some time reading Ubuntu Linux Resources.

Have you considered using virtual machines?
Where you don't have to mess about trying to repartition the disk (which is not entirely risk free), plus you get to run multiple OS at the same time (no reboot).