[xpod]

I should have started earlier with a "dont quote me on this"

"... and the winner of this year's Understatement of the Year award goes to... XPOD!"

I said "a little confusing" now

I was thinking it would be better to put it on the same drive as I have the OS, as that's the newest & biggest 1, & the least likely to be removed for any reason any time soon.

I think I'll try telling it to put it on hd2, as like I said, I'd prefer it on the same drive as the OS

Sounds good.Keeping everything seperate is great but i just dont like seeing people trying linux & possibly getting peeved off just becuse of any needless complexity(unfamiliarity)...not on first outings anyway.
I know there are people who actually take their Windows drives out(disconnect) when installing Linux on second drives.Then they just use their f12(or similar?) at start up for choosing which drive to actually boot.

What can I say? I guess I'm just used to having my computer setup the way I want it, rather than some arbitrary decision made by the software I'm installing, that's why I always choose the custom install option when it's available with Windows software.

Quite right too,The whole point of Linux is the freedom to do what you want. All i meant though was that if someone is finding it a bit difficult to get the head round all the manual partitioning terms etc then there are much simpler ways to go about it.
If people installing for the first times are going to go down the more complicated roads to start out then good luck to them.It`s all good education....as long as they know there are easier ways usually...EDIT:And as long as they dont let it put them off

True. The problem is, there's no need for it to be this awkward, it's not like GUI design is difficult [as in actually figuring out how to lay things out, etc; not including the coding of the GUI in that statement]. Sometimes I wonder if some linux programmers feel that their software has to be awkward to use & unintuitive, or else they'd be "selling out" or something.

It`s only awkward when it`s not familiar m8.(more understatements eh)
Your just used of doing things a certain way,with certain terms.
If you ever find yourself having "used" linux for anywhere near as long as you`ve used Windows(?) then i`m sure those hd0`s & sda`s will be just as easy to understand as those familair ole C`s & `Ds.

I think [hope] I understand partitioning enough, even under Linux, not to risk FUBARing my XP installs, but I do take your point. The Kubuntu installer told me it failed when trying to format the first partition of the 3 [/] as ext3, so I rebooted into XP, created & formatted 3 partitions [ext3, swap, & ext3] in Partition Manager, then rebooted with the Kubuntu CD. This time when I get to the parititoning bit I simply assigned the partitions to what I want them to be & carry on. Then it tells me that the partition designated as / isn't set to be formatted [even though it's a cleanly formatted partition], & that I must set it to be formatted, except it wouldn't let me. I tried clicking in the formatting checkbox to set it to be formatted but it wouldn't change state. At that point I gave up with Kubuntu & decided to try Ubuntu [well, it was that & the fact that I'd had Kubuntu's KDE toolbar crash on me for no apparent reason!].

You could always install KDE once your up & running if you want but either way never be put off by looks.Any Linux can be made to look any way you want really.