XP should read FAT32 without any problems.

Running FAT32 at home is a minimal issue. It's frowned upon in the business
environment because of the inability to apply any kind of security at the file
and directory level.

Doesn't it have to be a primary partition though in order for XP
to see it? I would guess it'd be trivial to assign any partition
as home in Linux but last time I played with a multi-OS machine
the partition order and type was critical for Windoze.

If I recall correctly, it only has to be a primary partition for Windows to boot
off it. Additional data drives don't have the same limitations.

I don't think it's a good idea.

www.linuxforums.org/.../109041-ntfs-fat32.html

It's a bit dated, but still mindful.

As FAT32 is a common peecee filesystem, it may be OK for carrying mp3s
around on usb drives, but it can't handle unix filesysystem objects,
ownership and permissions, pipes, symlinks, quotas or other needful
things. Even distros that can run on a peecee filesystem don't run
directly on it; it's impossible without a virtual unix filesystem to
provide the hooks for unix to operate.

What does this mean? If you have different users under /home, they will
all have the same perms and owner - goodbye privacy and security. If you
have symlinks, they won't work. dotfiles? I don't think they can exist
on FAT32. A lot of things will break.

In short, it won't work. If I needed something like a FAT32 area on
linux, I'd keep /home on a native unix filesystem, and mount the FAT32
partition somewhere else. - maybe /home/FAT, or /usr/local/PEECEE

I started using Ubuntu with 8.04, so I haven't been using any Linux
disto for long. What amazes me is peoples desire to compromize Linux
using windows failed attempts. Fat goes back to Dos days. It has
fragmentation problems, can be compromized by windows lack of security.
The Linux community of developers work at giving the best they can
find to our computers.

I use a flash drive that both windows and Linux can see and write to.
You can save anything you want to it using "save as" and selecting that
flash drive. Much of what is saved in the home directory can't be used
by windows anyhow and can only be compromized by windows lack of
security. You can drag your files to the flash after the fact to make
them usable by doze in effect making a copy of your file backing it up.

I find Linux much easer, faster, and safer than anything MS has to offer
us. Any compromising you do, may leave your computer at risk. Any
failure anyone has due to such practice, is not a reflection on the
Linux developers, but rather a reflection on anybody that won't take the
time to learn how to use a better OS. Let Mint give you a fresh breath,
rather than bringing MS stink with you.

You should not do this. Linux is made for Linux file systems and Windows for
Windows file systems. You can always install a utility in Windows to read
ext partitions. I am not sure if they can handle ext4, but ext3 works fine.
See:
www.cyberciti.biz/.../...xt3-ext3-file-system.html
http://www.fs-driver.org/

FAT32 has many problems that you would not want to introduce to Linux. Most
Windows users would not use it, but would use NTFS instead.