New HTPC, want to try different OS..how best?

I am putting to new HTPC to record and play video. I has two HDDs, an 80 gig I am planning to put the OSs on, and A 250 gig to store video on.

Right now the only thing I have is a 20 gig NTFS partion on the 80 with Windows XP in it. Currently I am optimizing the system (I'd use Linux but I have yet to find an equivalent of Clockgen).

I want to try the following OS's:

Knoppix (4.02 probably if it will load on this machine) or Overclockix 3.79 and Myth TV - I run a lot of FAH clients using Overclockix so I feel slightly comfortable here.

Ubuntu and Myth TV - I hear Ubuntu is user friendly, thought I'd give it a try... I also like that its 64 bit...like to see how that works.

Knoppmyth - dedicated Myth TV..should be straight forward (I hope!)

M$ XP and MCE - Not a huge Windows fan, but the rest of the family is at least familiar with Windows.

I want to try these various OS and ultimately I will pick one (based on my family's feedback) to use routinely.

One question I have is what order should I put these on. And what file extention (ext2 or ext3)? How much swap (I have 2gig memory, and is a Opteron 165 CPU)? What should use to do the partitioning with (I was thinking a KnoppixCD w/Qparted)?

Then, what order should I install them in (I have always heard Windows should go on first as it does not like to be installed later).

Also, any other flavors that I might want to try?

Finally, how should I format the 250 gig so that I can read the videos in any system (and am I dreaming here).

Knoppmyth will be your best bet. If you want a shared filesystem, use vfat/FAT32 for a partition the 2 OS's will share. Use ext3 for Linux and NTFS for windows, You probably don't need swap, but 512MB of swap never hurt anyone. Install windows 1st because it will overwrite the MBR if you install Linux 1st.

What would happen if I used NTFS for the coomon drive..could Linux read this? The reason is FAT32 can only take a max of 4gig files, and I am afraid I might end up with a movie file bigger than this. Also, I think I would have to split the frive into multiple partiotions inFAT32.

Thanks for your help! I set up some partitions last night. Ubuntu would only let me set 4 primary partitions (and Swap countsas one)

So I install Ubuntu last night...dual boot with Grub worked fine. Then I installed Overclockix 3.79..worked great but it used Lilo. It dual boots Windows, but blew away Ubuntu as a start option...

You can use ntfs, but assume its read only in linux. Write support is...iffy.

Ive actually had decent luck with ext2 drivers in windows. Format it ext2/3, and windows can read it with the drivers.

You can only have 4 primary partitions on a drive - make an extended partition first.

CPU Frequency driver for 64bit Linux: http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=69582

Good luck :- ]

Yes, the ext2 IFS driver for windows seems to work quite well.