Linux and NTFS

Hello,
Will most Linux distros. run on NTFS partitions? -I'm thinking of setting up a dual boot with Windows XP and probably Mandrake Linux to test the 'Linux water's' but both my drives are NTFS -does that pose any problems.
Thanks for the help.
-522.

 

Short answer: no.

NTFS support in Linux is generally limited to read-only (as R/W drivers tend to damage the file system). Remember: NTFS is a proprietary standard. Even the read-only support is somewhat unreliable (last I knew). OSS people don't have access to how it's supposed to work. It has to be re-engineered. As far as running on (ond booting to) the NTFS partition, certainly not. I imagine it's possible (involving writing your own kernel modules, probably) but it's not practical.

Besides, Linux based file systems (ReiserFS, extfs2/3, etc) have their own advantages.

There are Linux distros that run on FAT, however (notably, Slackware). And numerous CD-based distros exist (which, obviously, use CD-FS for the file system).

 

Thanks so much for the reply,
Now: what do I do now?: Both my HDDs are NTFS. I own Partition Magic 8 if that will help. Can I reformat one partition to Fat32 so Linux 'll run on it?
-Any suggestions/help would be appreciated.
Thanks so much,
522.

 

Hey 522,
Partition Majic should do it all nicely. It even has support for linux filesystems, though I can't remember which off the top of my head.

Just curious...
If you are going to install to hdd, why not dual-boot, and make a ext2 or ext3 filesystem just for linux? (you know -- make an extra partition). That should give you better performance...