Hi

Just about to set up Ubuntu 07.10, and for the first time I would like to create a custom partition layout.
I have a 200gig hardrive and 2gig ram.
I plan to set up partitions like this:

/ - 40 gig
/home - 80 gig
/usr - 70 gig
swap 4 gig.

The main reason for doing this is , if I get things right, I will keep all my files on /home if I need to reinstall or want to share my /home with another install if I where to get a second drive in my computer.
Is the layout OK?

/A

i have a dual boot

mine is like

10gb linux
10gb windows
90gb files (home etc)
2gb swap
500mb dos

Hi andy.s,
there is surely no "correct" answer to your questions, since different people prefer different flavours.
I - imho - would change some sizes:

For desktop machines, I never had need for so big root partitions. My standard root size is between 15 and 20 gig _including "/usr"_. Do you have special plans that require 70 gig in "/usr"?
I usually need most space on my home directories...
Dividing the home directories from the system directories is surely a good idea.

1)
For a desktop machine with no special aims, I would size your partitions as following:
2)
I like to preserve an unused partition to install new opersting systems... E.g., if my distribution releases a new version, I install the new version on a blank partition, keeping my current working system as long, as I need to get the new one working productive for me. This leads to following:
3)
I also like the idea to divide system specific files (that is: nearly all .* files, e.g.) in my home directory from independent files (that is: My documents, music, e.g).
I think, I can change my operating system more quickly, since I leave all "dependent" files on my old system. I only copy and adapt a small amount of "dependant" files.
I have to admit, that some people don't like this idea. ;-)
Anyway, if doing so, I would partition as following, keeping in mind, that this layout is not very multi-user-friendly:
Finally I wrote much more than intended initially. Thanks four your patience. ;-)

Ask 5 people the same question---get 10 different answers.

Most people have no need for separate partitions for, e.g., /usr or /home. It is usually just fine to have only two: / and swap.

My system:
several partitions for different OSes--each ~10GB (each one mounted as / when that system is running.)
one swap (my reading says that 1GB is always enough--regardless of RAM size)
one partition for shared data (mounted at /home/data with individual folders accessed thru links)
empty space (unpartitioned) for future changes. (It's far easier and safer to add a partition than to resize an existing one)

Personally, I'd recommend more space for /home and less for the rest. For / including /usr I can't imagine using more than 15 GiB unless you intend to install every possible package under the sun. I find that all this takes only about 5-10 GiB.

An exception might be if you have a lot of data which gos in /var - like a whole cluster of web sites or something like that... for this maybe you want a separate partition.

Assuming a more normal desktop system use, I'd go for this:
/ - 20 gig
/home - 100 gig
swap 4 gig.

Rest - leave it unpartitioned. You can use it later for testing another distro, or as reserve space in case your /home gets too big.

These day's this is not needed to be this size 1 Gb is enough, any more is a wast.

For what It's worth: You don't really need all that storage space for just one distro. Here's my setup:

one 80 gig IDE drive divided as follows:

1. 20 gig Win XP
5. 8 gig PCLOS 2007 /
6. 3 gig PCLOS Swap
7. 9 gig PCLOS /home
8. 8 gig Debian etch /
9. 3 gig Debian Swap
10. 9 gig Debian /home
11. 20 gig unallocated/unformatted for experimenting.

Everything runs just fine, and has plenty of room. The swap files are unnecessarily big, but it made things neater. There is a second drive of 20 gig for archive storage which can be accessed by all of the apps-both Linux and Win.

You might as well share swap between different Linux OSes.

I was just going to say that, I get away with half a gig of swap on a machine with 256 mb of ram