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[Tom Roche <Tom_Roche AT pobox.com>]

I've got a laptop with 1 disk with basically just winXP on it. How
best to partition it so as to

* leave enough space for GDS indexes

* put a linux on it

details:

Apologies if the following questions seem dumb, but it's been a long
time since I setup a box, like RHL5 and winNT respectively, so I might
as well be a newbie :-( so please let me know if any of the following
is nonsensical or could be done better ...

The TP currently has one 88 GB drive (hey, it was cheap !-) with just
winXP (SP2) and the Lenovo utilities on just C: (and a small rescue
partition). I'd like to

0 have all my drives have freespace >= 1/4. This is because, IIRC,
 performance typically degrades rapidly when freespace decreases
 below that threshold. Is that still true? Was it ever true?

1 make a D: drive for applications, data, and swapfile--roughly
 everything but the current contents. This is because

* IIRC, win32 performs better if the swapfile is not on the system
 disk. Is that true for XP?

* I want to share data with linux (below).

2 put GDS on the C: drive. Actually I'd prefer not to, but when (March
 07) I put GDS on my work TP (now departing), it insisted on
 installing to C:, the freespace of which it then swiftly filled with
 index files, hanging the box :-( On searching Google's help, I found
 that one couldn't not make it install on C:--has that changed?
 Alternatively, is there a better alternative to GDS folks would like
 to recommend? If not, I wanna leave enough space on C: for GDS, its
 index files, and sufficient freespace for performance.

3 put a linux (prob Ubuntu but am open to other distros) on the box.
 I'd then like to dualboot and have both the linux and winXP be able
 to share certain data (e.g. Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, Emacs
 config files, OpenOffice docs, MP3s).

Your suggestions regarding how best to carve up the 88 GB, and how to
do the carving (e.g. should I pry the 20-30 bucks for PartitionMagic
out of my diminished wallet, or is there recommended freeware, or can
I do all of the above with winXP's Disk Management?), or that I should
do Something Completely Different (e.g. install linux first and let it
do the partitioning?), are appreciated.

Feel free to respond directly to me (as well as to the list) and TIA,
Tom Roche <Tom_Roche AT pobox.com>