I'm wondering if there is a filesystem that linux can write to and windows can at least read from (would be nice if it could write as well). I am aware that Linux can read from NTFS but cannot write to it (well I can't at least) and I'd like to set up a partition with a filesystem that both OS's can read/write from so that I can use and edit files working under either OS (specifically files for my website).

If you compile the kernel yourself, there is an option to enable NTFS write support. Alternatively both windows and linux can read/write FAT32, although you won't be able to set file permissions in the usual linux way.

FAT32 is pretty much the standard for this. Linux can be made to write NTFS, but this is full of peril. Windows can be made to write to EXT2, but again, this may be perilous. I'd go for FAT32.

Well, I've been considering building up gentoo linux, but the 90-something page manual (and my relative lack of linux command line experience) are really kind of pushing me towards something else, but I think I'll waste the paper and try it anyways. That'll let me compile my own kernel (where I'll be enabling it to write to NTFS) and I'll also create a FAT32 for the really important stuff. If my XP installation gets toasted, I won't loose any sleep over it.

Thanks everybody

Not that I'd deter anyone trying Gentoo, but there is no reason to swap distro just for a kernel compile.
Whilst I never managed to coerce Suse to install on my machine, even that should cope.

BTW I suspect you're going to be severely disappointed with the NTFS write support. I haven't tried since 2.6.13 when the latest (new) code was introduced, but it didn't do the job in my testing.
NTFS is proprietry, and has changed at different points in time - tough job to reverse engineer it.
Like the others I stay away from it (writing that is).

Good luck with Gentoo - the doco is excellent.

I re-installed to debian, got ticked because it was giving me headaches with my mouse, and now I'm using SUSE 10.0.46 (the dev build).

I haven't done much but install GAIM, and I don't want to do all that much because a defrag under windows today exposed that I haven't much room to size down that partition so if I go for gentoo, then I'll have to blow away SUSE.

And, no, compiling a kernel probably isn't a reason to switch distro's, but a lack of anything better to do with my time is