thanks
I have not built any ROMs (I have written some simple apps in JAVA), but I think you are going to need linux (maybe you could get by with something like eclipse - very helpful utility - but I don't know if you could test it w/o Linux). The link from Lifehacker below has some good info. I created a bootable flash drive with linux mint - which is really cool (I mean the bootable flash drive, but mint is pretty good as well - I know some of the "real" programmers use Ubuntu and Mint is a more user - friendly version of Ubuntu).
ok so i went ahead and downloaded ubuntu and when i go to write it to a disk using infrarecorder i cant find it i have tried redl'ing it a couple of times alread but to no avail can i just download it to my desktop (xp) and burn it from there i want to try my hand at making apps and writing roms and the such any help would be appreciated