Seeking a concise Linux installation checklist

[joe at actionline.com]

Eric Shubes wrote, in part:
> ok to ... dual boot XP/Linux, running VBox on Linux
> Then you introduced dual booting multiple linux distros along with XP.
> Not a good idea in this day and age.
> I think your objective should be to get to the point of having a single
> linux boot, with VBox running whatever other OSs you want from there,
> including XP. Forget about dual booting unless it's absolutely necessary
> to get from here to there.
[snipped]

Thanks Eric. I certainly do always trust your counsel.

Since I need to be unavailable much of the time until May, I'll have to
come back to this later. But I just wanted to explain why I had proposed
the multiple boot scenario.

I really do detest xp and everything M$ and I rarely use it; however,
since it is on the system and I have way more HD space than I need, I
thought I might just leave it there and make the proposed triple boot to
be able to access two different Linux installations for this reason:

Every time I have ever "updated" a Linux distro, it has caused problems,
and it seems to me that the newer Linux distros have become more bloatware
and a whole lot less reliable than my "old reliable" system which I
*never* update and which *never* fails to perform flawlessly (although it
does have some obvious limitations). Therefore, I would like to install
that "old reliable" system as one of two Linux options.

In the second Linux installation, I hope to install VirtualBox with xp as
a virtual option.  But it is because I am apprehensive because of my
universal and uniform past experience with newer distros that I would like
to keep that "fall-back" option of "old reliable."  Thus the triple-boot
notion.