How do I create Dual Booting?

This may sound like a n00b question, but I do have certain criteria on the dual boot.

Partitions:
IDE0 C:NTFS 90gb
IDE1 D:NTFS 6.4gb
IDE2 E:CDROM
IDE3 F:CDRW
SCSI G:VirtualCD
IDE0 Z:NTFS 30gb

I want to use the boot manager in Windows 2000, and I'm intending to dual boot a second OS. It'll be Red Hat 8 if possible. Or if Win2k boot manager can't read it, Windows XP Pro.

So I wanna know what are the criterias and how to I make dual boot so that it'll make use of my current Win2k's boot manager.
ie. Must install 2nd OS on a logical drive... bla bla

Thanks for helping me.

I did a quick scearch on Yahoo! and whipped this puppy up:

http://www.benchtest.com/linux_win2k.html

Enjoy!

edit: oops, thats redhat 7.1, i'll go look for a 8.0 sorry

I cant seem to find an 'Dual Boot Win2K-Redhat 8.0' guide, but from what i've been skimming threw, alot of people preferr RH 7.1 over 8.0. Just thought I'd let you know that

We've discussed situations like this several times. Phantasm66 even wrote a guide on it you can find in this thread:
Installing Linux for the first time (& dual boot)

Read through that and if you have some specific questions that you still have after reading post back.

I've got a slight question...I see you guys going to all this trouble installing RH8/Mandrake or whatever, but why? I know absolutly nothing about Linix/Unix/RedHat,etc,etc. I'd think Windows would do the job just fine Whats RedHat/Linux,etc, offering thats so appealing?

An alternative to Windows.

Freeware.

For servers, Linux may prove to be a cheaper and better alternative to Windows

Agissi....there are quite a few reasons that people switch to Linux. To start with, it is considered a more advanced OS, in which people who know a lot about computers tend to run it. As eddy said the servers in LIinux are MUCH more stable than windows, and the OS in general is much more stable.

For others it is just a something different than what M$ has to offer. People like Mict don't like M$ so they use BeOS, just an alternative.

I recommend you give it a shot if you can. I learned quite a bit about it when I used to run it and play with it. I have gotten away from in temporarily, but plan on getting back into it.

My current partitions are NTFS... so since Linux don't fully support NTFS, phan99's guide is abt FAT32..

Linux can read NTFS no problem if support is compiled into the kernel. It can also attempt to write, but this is experimental and dangerous, and likely to cause file system corruption. The best way to share a partition between operating systems for data is to use FAT32. FAT32 sux for a number of things, but that's one of the things its good for. On a pure Windows 2000 / XP system use NTFS.

I converted my file system to FAT32 from NTFS, does it really make that much of a difference performance wise?

That depends on the size of partition, size of clusters, what sort of files you've got there, etc.. But the difference will not be sth very noticeable.