how to format my external drive?

[Edith Frost]

Hi!  I'm dual-booting YDL and OSX on my iBook.  I have a new Maxtor
external firewire hard drive that I want to use to store MP3s.  I did
get the drive working and visible on both sides by formatting it as HFS
using Apple's Disk Utility.  But I want to use a filesystem that allows
for long filenames, so I won't ruin my MP3s by chopping off their
names.  How can I format this thing so it's mountable and writeable on
both sides, and also allow for the long filenames?  I've tried
formatting it as Apple_UFS, but can't seem to get it mounted as such in
Linux, and don't even know if it'll be writeable if I do succeed.  Any
help would be much appreciated; I'm tearing my hair out trying to do it
on my own.

Edith