When I have to use the one Windows app that still needs XP, I do it in Vmware, without partitioning my storage device for it. If you want to install XP and Linux on the same drive without virtualization then I guess you have to make two partitions, but it doesn't make you fragment the linux one any further than / and swap.
I disagree. I think there are good reasons to have multiple linux partitions.
On my laptop I have one XP partition (lets ignore this). One /boot partition of 100M, two partitions of 10G and the rest (about 30G as /home)
Currently I have FC6 installed on one of the 10G partitions, using the /boot and /home partitions. The other 10G partition is mounted as /data and use for temp storage of this and that.
when a new FC comes along, say FC7, I will clear out /data, backup the current content of /boot and then do a clean install on that partition. During the install tjhe partition that FC6 mounts as /data is used as / (and the FC6 /parition mounted as say /fc6) .
After this, assuming the FC7 installed worked I can boot into my new clean FC7. I then, by hand add back to /boot the entries needed to boot to my old FC6 system.
After doing this I effectively have a triple boot system, winXP, FC6 and FC7.
Once I am happy FC7 is OK, I can delete FC6 and reuse that partition.
In you scheme, with one linux partition you cannoty do a clean FC7 install without first deleting FC6. What if FC7 does work in some way ? In my scheme I still have FC6 which I can go back to, whilst the problems with FC7 are fixed. With yours you do not.
I don't presently use LVM, mainly because it was not around when I first started using this system (FC1 or so). However, now I probably would as it would allow me to resize the partitions easily (for instance if I found 10G was not enough for /) something I cannot do at the moment with the standard partitions.
Chris