Putting off the partitioning issue
 

I installed Slack on my computer. Multiple signal 11s later, I discovered that the hardware was dodgy. So I have a new computer on the way.

It's got an 80GB hard drive. I have no idea what to do with all this space.

So I'm contemplating a small /boot partition, a 5GB / and a 5GB /home partition, a 512MB swap partition, and running with just that until I work out where the rest of the space should go - more partitions, bigger partitions, etc.

Is this a workable approach, or will it cause me problems down the line?

That setup should work fine

Yup, and if you find your setup to get too cramped, you can implement LVM, which can combine two partitions to look like one -- effectively giving you more space to whatever partition needs it :-D

I'd suggest at least 50-100 for /boot, though.

--Shade

Why is that? Most places I've seen recommend keeping boot smaller than 50MB