You have the most stable version, the version of Ubuntu intended for
businesses, server use, etc. 6.10 is the current version, which contains latest
innovations, but is a bit twitchy compared to 6.06.1 LTS. There is yet another
release due soon, but no need to worry about your version as Canonical claims to
support it for at least a couple of years yet.

Yes, in my opinion it is easy (once familiar with the OS) to install for a
dual boot. Normally things go smoothly when Ubuntu is installed after XP (as
opposed to the other way around). I am sending this message via Outlook Express
(XP) from a HD which Windows shares with Ubuntu. I have split this particular
80GB HD into two 40GB segments for each OS and everything seems to work
swimmingly thus far.

I would suggest using "Guided Partitioning" in order to achieve your goals.
You will be presented with several options; choose to resize the XP partition,
and make sure there is plenty of room for Ubuntu. (Minimum requirements are
listed, although you would do well to allow for more space)

Thanks for the guidance/input.
I will be installing it on a 40 gb laptop drive that is only about
half full.
In your opinion, is 10 gb enough for Ubuntu?
Is the "Guided Partioning" part of the Ubuntu setup?

Well, I have 6.06LTS dual booted on my laptop. I have the 40g drive
split into two 20g partitions. I never did get the partition program
on the live Ubuntu disk to work however. I used "gparted" to
partion the disk, then loaded Ubuntu. I have been using this
arrangement for 6 months and am using Windows less and less. I
always use Ubuntu for work on the web.

My desktop Compaq AMD3400+ has Ubuntu on a 7g partition, working
well for web work. Note that there is a separate partition also for
Ubuntu of about 3g for working files. Within the 7g I have loaded
all the codex's for audio and video, Gimp, a large astronomy program
(Carte du Ciel), and a lot of other stuff.

For the Windows partition remember to leave room for windows to
operate, say 5 or 6g minimum.

I've done this with my setup, and the dual-boot works
fine. In fact, the Ubuntu setup gave me the option, all I had to do was OK it.

Is there some way to change the order the selections show up
in? Instead of defaulting to Ubuntu, is there some way I could have
it default to Windows XP?

I know, all y'all are asking,"WHY???"

Well, if I was to do that, then I could put Ubuntu on the
home computer, and if I wasn't there, my family could still use the
machine with something they are familiar with.

I imagine you could manually edit the GRUB bootloader file and
accomplish your desired boot order, however, I've never needed to do
this personally, since my needs are met when all the options are
presented regardless of their order (I have no pesky secondary users to
deal with).

You could edit the file using the GEDIT utility, but wait until you have
received advice from someone with plenty of experience in this area (I
am disqualified immediately). If you were to mangle the editing, it
would likely render GRUB useless, causing the family to beat you
senseless with blunt objects as the cursor blinked maddeningly against
the cold, black background of death

I've SEEN that black background, fortunately the
3-finger salute got the laptop going again.

However, the reason I'm writing this email is that I was
able to edit my GRUB menu.lst today and now my laptop defaults to XP
instead of Kubuntu. Now that I know how to do it, I can install
Kubuntu on the home computer.

While Nautilus was indeed not part of Kubuntu, I forgot I added it to mine,
of course any good flie editor would suffice. Editing the Grub is simple as
you found, and usless you want to continiuously tab up and down for a
selection on each and every boot, its a real boon to change the order.



While I am sorry I did not help first time I am glad to hear you sorted it
out another way. We can all offer each other help. There is not such thing
as an expert.

I upgraded some packages earlier this morning, and menu.lst
got totally re-written, and my menu selection for Windows XP was
GONE. Fortunately it was recent enough that I could guess at it and
rewrite that section of menu.lst.

I don't know what you did to your grub that make Ubuntu overrides your
changes. However if you want to make Windows your default boot OS, there
is a commented directive that should be in the top of your menu.lst
file. The directive name is "default" and it is defaulted to 0 (0 is the
order of your first choice of OSs in the menu) uncomment that and set it
to whatever Windows's order is in your menu.lst file.

I only keep the latest Ubuntu kernel so I have
0. Ubuntu
1. Ubuntu (Recovery Mode)
2. Ubuntu (memtest)
3. line divider (this is also counted)
4. Windows
so I put default 4 at the top of my menu.lst file. I have been using
this for over a year and I had no problem upgrading packages at all.
I also like to use the colors directive
# Pretty colours
color cyan/blue white/blue

All I originally did was edit menu.lst like
any other text file, and I simply cut-and-pasted the Windows section
so it was at the top. I had no idea about any of the "default" settings.