I am for Linux, and commend them for what has been accomplished, and hope they can do more, but often the promotion of it as a replacement fore Windows is misleading (just read the help forums). I have tried about all the top Linux distros, but besides needing to learn coding for many things that should be GUI by now, and hardware issues, etc., i cannot get R+W privileges to my 3 NTFS Windows drives, despite running scripts offered on the help forums (i could access them if the driver was installed). In addition, using codecs necessary to encode/play mpeg2, wmv etc. file is illegal in the U.S., unless you buy them. Both these problems are due to proprietary issues, but presents some real drawback for Windows power user types.
Now be fair here. How easy would it be to have R+W access to ext3 Linux drives from Windows?
To solve the problem when I was running a dual boot I simply made a small VFAT partition to use as a file transfer and common file partition. This partition could be read and written from Linux and Windows. I did the same thing when I was running my business using OS/2 as its operating system.
This is no longer needed, Simply install ntfs-3g and establish your Windows partitions as filesystem ntfs-3g, In my Mandriva 2008.1 system I no longer have or need a VFAT partition.
The problem was with Windows, not Linux. So far as Linux is concerned, it can read and write the ntfs-3g partition as if it were a native Linux partition. Windows thinks that the ntfs-3g partition is just a ntfs partition and thinks that the Linux partitions do not exist.