I'm not so sure about XP but on the pc that I am using now I have windows 2000. some time ago I installed slackware .. didn't like that , so I formatted the linux partitions "using Windows disk managment" , installed RedHat 9 .. then decided to try Mandrake 10 -- again didn't like that -- now I'm back to RedHat 9 -- in few days -- as soon as I complete the download of Fedora Core 2 . I'll give it a shot. the thing is : Linux was installed 4 times -- 3 different falvours -- on a 40 GB HDD shared with windows 2000 -- the Win2k installation was not affected at all. It works just fine in a dual boot configuration, the only thing is you need to have enough free space on your HDD to install linux on -- and of course you should be careful while installing linux -- you do not want to format the windows partition -- I know many people who did just that, and if u do not have backup it is going to be ugly