[KLUG Members] Re: Windows 2000 and Linux question

[Bryan J. Smith]

> My partition is NTFS - would FAT32 be preferable?

If you want Linux to be able to safely read _and_ write from it, yes. 
There are various attributes stored in the NTFS filesystem that are not
easily extracted, especially since some are tied to the registry.  FAT32
is also 100% compatible with every application I've thrown at it -- I
[infrequently anymore, but still on the rare occassion] run into
programs that add "strange" when running and/or loading/saving files on
NTFS (again, it's rare nowdays, more from the NT 4.0 and earlier days). 
Like 99.9% of the problems with NT/2K/XP, its the Windows applications
_ignorance_, not so much the OS.

Of course, there are security issues with FAT32.  I use NTFS on my
corporate network installs, although all NT 4.0, 2000 nor XP
install with a C: drive NTFS in what I would consider "locked down"
state by default.  But there are a crapload of programs out there, even
Microsoft branded, that expect you to have at least "Power User"
privaledge levels, and even full "Administrator" in some cases.  This
makes the use of NTFS v. FAT32 from a security perspective moot.

For home use, FAT32 is what I use on my Windows XP system.  I also use
an account with "Administrator"-level privaledges.  This is because I
use it to run a whole 2 games:  "Operation Flashpoint" and "Star Fleet
Command 2".  I don't surf under it (let alone MS IE always been a great
way to crash NT ;-), and setup Mozilla as my default browser for that
rare case where a program needs a web browser (usually just for
automated game updates).

-- Bryan

-- 
Bryan J. Smith, Engineer        mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org   
AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc.     http://www.linux-wlan.org
SmithConcepts, Inc.          http://www.SmithConcepts.com