My HD currently looks like this:
I inherited this partition scheme and I don't feel like formatting and starting fresh to clean this up.
Linux is on partition 6. Partition 1 has MSdos, which I want to get rid of, I don't really need it.
want I want to end up with is:
My linux partition as big as it can be, a swap partition of 2 GB, and about a 3 GB storage partition.

I download GNU parted, and it seems straightforward, but I can really destory thigns if I do this wrong. Does anyone have any experience with this and maybe some suggestions for what order I should resize/rm etc to get this done without causing some major damage to my system.
thanks in advance!

Since you need to back everything up anyway, it really isn’t a big deal to do the backup, repartition/format the drive and then restore the contents.

This is one of the really good uses for a USB drive. Format it ext3 and use Knoppix (or rescue mode) to copy everything to the USB drive followed by partitioning, formatting and copying everything back to your drive.

When you’re done, you will need to edit grub.conf and fstab to reflect the new partition arrangement.

It really is easy to do and it’s how I do it.

I certainly don't have a USB drive big enough to hold that. Could I use a ghosting software or something to back it up to one my network windows machines?

To me your choice is pretty limited.

The first Dos partition is only 0.5Gb large and isn't a big space to write home about.

Your 17Gb Linux in 6th partition is huge by average standard as a distro has seldom a footprint larger than 5Gb.

Your Swap is already 2Gb large so no change needed.

The only significant space available is your 2nd partition which is 8Gb large. It is too large for a /boot and I have no idea what that is or would its removal affect your Linux.

My main point is you will have a job to incoporate empty primary partition space into the end of your extended partition. The logical partitions of swap at the 7th and the Linux at the 6th position cannot be re-numbered or your Linux will not boot.

My conclusion is that you could spend a lot of time on resizing but won't gain much out of your current setup.

Actually there is an 8 gb partition in spot 2
and a 9 GB partition in spot 5.
Also a 3 GB partition in spot 4 which I'm told is an old windows recovery partition.
I'm interested in increasing the main partition size because I experiment a lot with different software as I'm still in the early learning stages of Linux. I'd rather have the space together to install things to play around with. I could do symbolic linking, but I'd rather have things tidy. And I wouldn't call adding 18 GB to my pain partition not gaining anything..

Partition 3, what can I do with that? it seems like its some sort of container partition they created on the drive, it holds 3 partitions inside it. If I remove it will it remove the 3 inside, or just remove that entry?

Partition 3 is the envelope of containing partition 5, 6 and 7.

An extended partition is in name only and has no storage space inside. It only show the starting and finishing location of all your logical partitions in the hard disk.

Remove partition 3 and all your partition 5, 6 and 7 will be erased.

Looking at it now I am increasingly of the opinion your Linux could be in the partition 2 and the huge size of partition 6 could be /home of your Linux. It takes one heck of effort to burst the 17Gb if you are installing things inside. For your own data you can store them in any of the partitions and mount it for normal usage.

Not really try to talk you out but Linux-related software doesn't gain much in size. It is always personal data like MP3, photos etc that eats up the hard disk space. As a rule it is a bad idea to mix your personal data with any operating system. A better move is to store your personal data in its own partition that will not go down with the demise of the operating system. The personal data is easier for backing up as it will have no unwanted system files attached. In using fat32 partition the same data is accessible by both Windows and Linux too.

Well there isn't going to be any windows on the machine at all, windows will only access it via Samba across the network, so no need for FAT32.

I'm not familiar with how this /home works? most applications and such install to places like /usr/local/ or some variant of that (why does Linux have like 3 or 4 different games locations?) Part of my experimenting is of course installing things like games and is there a way to ensure they install somewhere else if I did keep a directory elsewhere? They do tend to take up some room. I've got 3 or 4 so far that take in the hundreds of megabytes range.

Eventually when I get comfortable enough with it it will be going on to my desktop, so I'm really doing just about everything with it.

Many subdirectories in Linux seldom grow in size but /home is the recommended directory for stuffing user's own data and traditionally Linux allocates the biggest size for it if the user has no preference. I prefer a distro residing in a single partition (except Swap) and so that your problem doesn't arise.