What is the best practice in creating file partitions? For example, i created
(i) / (256MB, primary)
(ii) /boot (256 MB, primary)
(iii) swap (512MB, primary)
(iv) /home (3GB, extended)
(v) /var (3GB, extended)
(vi) /tmp (2GB, extended)
(v) /usr (all the remaining storage on a 30GB hard disk)

I'm using dual-boot: FC 2 & WinXP. WinXP is on the SATA drive and FC2 on the 1st IDE primary, with 512MB RAM.

Well just to point out some possible problems in that.

- Your /boot will probably never use up 256MB. Also many modern computers with modern boot loaders no longer need separate boot partitions, they can boot properly on large partitions or even extended partitions.
- You are more likely going to save more data in /home than /usr.
- Restricting swap to the same size as memory has some limitation (for example you won't be able to Suspend-to-Disk ie. "Hibernate").

Basically you can get by with 3 partitions.
Root "/" should be about 6-10GB.
Swap 1GB good in your case.
/Home - all remaining space.

Unless you have advanced needs, I'm willing to bet you can get by perfectly with the above having minimal space wasted and no problems with too small partitions.

Thanks for the advice and one more question: is there any performance difference if the file system is on the extended partition instead of primary partition?

Not that I can see, I've jumped between running linux on primary and extended partitions countless times over the past few years. I haven't noticed any difference.

The only reason I put linux at times on an extended partition is to reserve a primary spot open for another OS that may require one (ie, windows).