When I have to use the one Windows app that still needs XP, I do it in
Vmware, without partitioning my storage device for it. If you want to
install XP and Linux on the same drive without virtualization then I
guess you have to make two partitions, but it doesn't make you fragment
the linux one any further than / and swap.
I disagree. I think there are good reasons to have multiple linux
partitions.
On my laptop I have one XP partition (lets ignore this). One /boot
partition of 100M, two partitions of 10G and the rest (about 30G as /home)
Currently I have FC6 installed on one of the 10G partitions, using the
/boot and /home partitions. The other 10G partition is mounted as /data
and use for temp storage of this and that.
when a new FC comes along, say FC7, I will clear out /data, backup the
current content of /boot and then do a clean install on that partition.
During the install tjhe partition that FC6 mounts as /data is used as /
(and the FC6 /parition mounted as say /fc6) .
After this, assuming the FC7 installed worked I can boot into my new
clean FC7. I then, by hand add back to /boot the entries needed to boot
to my old FC6 system.
After doing this I effectively have a triple boot system, winXP, FC6 and
FC7.
Once I am happy FC7 is OK, I can delete FC6 and reuse that partition.
In you scheme, with one linux partition you cannoty do a clean FC7
install without first deleting FC6. What if FC7 does work in some way ?
In my scheme I still have FC6 which I can go back to, whilst the
problems with FC7 are fixed. With yours you do not.
I don't presently use LVM, mainly because it was not around when I first
started using this system (FC1 or so). However, now I probably would as
it would allow me to resize the partitions easily (for instance if I
found 10G was not enough for /) something I cannot do at the moment with
the standard partitions.
Chris