I've had no problems seeing NTFS file systems under Mandrake?
thats because the kernel must have been compiled with the ntfs module, and why did you phrase that as a question?

Zen, here is a good resourse, search the forums, it is explained in a thread somewhere but i don't know it off the top of my head. also check out linuxnewbie.org and search through their forums before asking. chances are that it has already been discussed there also. and it has a nice help file on recompiling the kernel.