my hard drive is i a right state, so fairly soon i intend to back all my stuff up and repartition it completely; but i have a couple questions about this:

1) is this layout possible/ sensible?

250 gig sda-
sda1- /boot

sda2- extended with 4 partitions: Linux / partition 1
Linux / partition 2
etc up to probably 4 partitions

sda7-/home will be backed up automatically
sda8 6 gigs of swap

2) do i need boot? and if so some pointers on how to set it up?

3) erm any tips/newbie smashing/great wisdom

Seems reasonable to me. I never use /boot and have no problems with that. You may need a /boot if you intend to install on a RAID or LVM, but I am not sure about that.

so i just need to install grub to sda's mbr?

or will it get grub from the first OS's partition?

Hi,

I would not place '/etc' on a separate partition. You would be asking for issues/problems.
Why so much 'swap'?

The advantages of having a separate '/boot' are not what they were when we had '1024' limitations. The only exception now would be 'grub2' and ext4, LVM or XFS filesystems. I would check that though since 'grub2' is not my choice for a bootloader.

Remember that you will be allowed too have 4 primary partitions. One of which can be a extended that can contain your logical partitions. Linux File System section has several good links to help you to understand the Linux filesystem. Disk Partitioning defined, plus look at Linux Partition HOWTO to help in partitioning.

Install grub to the MBR.

I just let the disto do what it wants. I don't even partition unless it asks to.

thanks guys: i chose to stick with ext4 and install grub to the mbr and all is working great