partition for /home
 

I have heard it is a good idea to have /home on its own partition. Is this correct?
If so how do you achieve this?
If this is done, do you have to do anything special so applications know where to find /home when it is on a different partition?

Yes, it's totally corect for you having a separate partition for /home.
Most apps save user' settings in home directory for that user so a separate partition make sense when you, let's say, reinstall the SO.

Anyway, separate partitions from / is a good idea for security sake.

You can create a home partition with fdisk, cfdisk.

You must also put in /etc/fstab.

xcristi is right, and if you do this as part of your initial installation, you shouldn't have to do anything special, Mandrake should do it for you. If you are not doing an initial installation there's plenty out there to read to make sure you're doing everything properly. You are going to want to pay specific attention to permissions as they will boggle things up for users if they are incorrect.

xcristi, what does the following mean;
You must also put in /etc/fstab.

I take it it is a lot more complex to do this to an existing installation.
I will give it a go. Any references or links for doing it to an existing installation or during a new install would be appreciated. I will search for myself also.

I think xcristi was trying to say that you must add the new mount point information into the fstab file located in the /etc directory. This file contains all of the mount point information for your installation.

How to for Ubuntu, shouldn't be much different:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=46866

Thanks all. I will do some research based on your suggestions.

Using separate partitions is also recommended so that you don't wedge / or /var if you fill up /home whilst e.g. recording tv from a dvb card (as I did the other day, oops.......).