I am installing Linux for the first time and have decided to go with Mandrake version 9.2. I purchased the Power Pack that comes with 7 CDs. My relevant system statistics are:
Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
512 MB Ram
80 GB WD HD
I currently have 3 partitions: First has Win XP on it ~45 GB, Second partition is empty space for Windows stuff ~31 GB, and the third is where I would like to put Mandrake ~6 GB.

I want to know how to properly partition my system for Mandrake. I really don't understand the Linux file structure. I don’t know where to place programs where the actual kernel is placed and so on; so detailed help on this matter will be greatly appreciated. This is the current format I am thinking of going with:
/ = 100 MB
/boot = 100 MB
/var = 100 MB
/tmp = 250 MB
/usr = 3 GB
/home = 2.4 GB

Do I need a swap partition even though I have 512 of RAM? Am I missing any other partitions?

Thank You in advance for helping me out.

for beginner, don't really need to mess around with partitions that much

2 partition is good enough to get u start, and u can add more as time move on.

/swap and / is all u need for beginner.
those /home, /var ...etc are for more experience user. beside u can add'em as time move on.

so if u have 512mb but 512 for swap (that should be way enough)
then the rest are all goes to /

later on down in the road, if u got more users, u may need mroe partition for /home
if u wanna install more softwares, u may wanna add partition /opt...etc


hope that helps

+1, don't get crazy. You really only need those extra partitions if your running a production server ( i have it set that way) or if you have multiple users on the same computer. Anyways, make a swap and "/" partition. Swap is usually double the ram, but since you have 6gb free, I'd say 512 should be fine. Make sure you install grub, your bootloader to the MBR otherwise your machine will not boot. And make a back-up, and read a little before going ahead to be totally sure.

Adding /home and /usr are generally good ideas if you're planning on upgrading in the future, or are thinking of trying out another distro. Even if you don't fall into either category, this is still a very good idea, because if any of your partitions get corrupted, it won't affect the other ones(unless you harddrive goes bonkers). I'm a Linux newbie, and I'm doing very well with a similar structure to the one you originally proposed(although with a /swap partition).

You know, that is a real good Idea. I just noticed that since /home can stay and be mounted under a different distro, right? Why keep the /usr though? If you run a diff distro, won't their be differences?

In my experience, (and I do use the same partitioning scheme as bobsmith48 posted) it is better to have a bigger /var than 100MB. When I was installing kde 3.2, I remember that all the packages came up to more than 550MB, and fortunately my /var is 800MB. So if you're going to be installing a lot of packages at one given time, make it bigger!

Just my 2 cents.