Partitioning FC5 on 80GB WD HDD - Am I doing this right?
 

I finally have a working box to throw FC5 on.

I have limited working knowledge of partitioning HDs for Linux as my first Linux install (ah, you never forget your first) was commandeered by a friend - and there were several partitions, including:

/
/boot
/swap
/usr
/var
/tmp
/home

... ad nausaeum. This is going to be my first fresh install of Linux done by myself, so I'm attempting to take great pains to find a partitioning scheme that's right for me. I know I'm not going to need all above-listed partitions, so after doing some research I've compiled a tentative plan for how I'm going to split this thing:

Thing is, I'm not sure if the FS and sizes are appropriate. Only a few threads on the forums have given me any clues as to generally accepted volumes and filesystems.

I guess my question is basically "Am I doing this right?" If not, any suggestions for how I should do it? I might end up doing something regular like the three-partition scheme ( /, /boot, /swap) but I really like the idea of the other directories.

By the way, this is just going to be a personal-use computer, but I do want to make the most out of what I have.

Thanks in advance!

I would make two things bigger: / and /tmp. Why?

/ keeps all your programs (/bin, /usr and so on - you don't plan to have them separate). It means you need to fit with the whole install in the size of /. If you plan a server, that should be OK. But for a desktop machine with X, KDE or GNOME and hundreds of applications you need 3-4GB. It means approx 5GB (or just 10) to have space in the future.

/tmp is used for temporary files. The size you need depends on the things you do. If you plan to deal with photos, for example (scale them etc), you can easily get a 200MB temporary file. Also downloads often go to that dir (depending on the program). There are programs that allow you to choose temporary directory, but it's not that easy with all. I'd use 1GB here.

Thank you for your help, Mara!

or you could just use a root and swap partition so you don't have to worry about leaving enough space here or too much there.

Yep, you really only need a /swap partition and a / partition. You could add a /home partition just to make upgrades and/or distro change a little easier, but it really isn't needed.

I run with just swap and root and never have to concern myself with whether I made the partitions big enough or wasted space by making them too big.

I do suggest leaving yourself at least one unused blank partition for playing around with other distros (which you'll eventually end up wanting to do).

Many people base the size of their swap partition upon the amount of ram available on the machine.

Swap partition = to 1.5 the amount of ram. Not to exceed 1 gig.

Thanks for all the sound advice. I'm still trying to decide whether to use the partition plan above or whether to go the simpler route, like you guys suggested. I'm sure I'll figure something out.

masonm: Do you mean just leave unpartitioned space, or delegate a partition named /[partitionname] and leave it blank? (I promise I'll stop being such a n00b when I actually get this thing off the ground)

hpladd: Yep, that's where I got the 512 from :) Thank you!