Hmm, Linux and windows isn't all that bad.
Mandrake Linux (probably others too, I don't know, haven't tried) allows you to make a folder an virtually mount Linux, so you don't have to reformat or anything like that. It's stable, but a bit slower - however, it doesn't require making partitions. Or you can just leave some unpartitioned space and format/mount it in the setup. Either way works.
The one thing I'm not terribly crazy about is not being able to access files in windows from Linux. You can do it the other way around though. Comes with the territory, I suppose.
And Gallstaff, I've done Windows 98/ 2000/ Linux at one time. LILO is one heck of a bootloader.
In any event, I imagine if you wanted to do all four at once, you'd set up four or five partitions, install 98 first, in the first partition (always in the first partition) then XP, then XP in the third, and Linux in the fourth. Lilo should recognize the first three partitions (if that's what you use, I think it's being included in most distros these days) and write a fourth for itself.
But that's a helluva a lot of work.
If anything, you can install everything but the drivers in partition 2, then ghost it and overwrite partition 3 (after installing XP), since the boot.ini is in drive C. This is applicable with or without Linux, although I imagine you'd need a separate bootloader.
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Personally, the time you'd spend setting up two XPs may make system rollback/ghosting better. I mean, after you figure out which drivers are better, wouldn't that make one of the XP's moot? Or maybe I'm misinterpreted what you're saying, and that one XP is purely for recording and the other is for gaming (isn't that what hardware profiles are for?).