hello to all,

I'm just requesting some advice. I'm going to move into the use of Linux as a workstation OS, (how I wish I was a good enough programmer to aid the cuase) and I plan on triple booting Windows ME , which I use now. Windows 2000 Pro and Fedora (Linux).

I'm going to move/clone my old 10GB HDD with WinME to a new 30GB HDD and then partion appropriately with Partion Magic.

I plan on having things sectioned off like this:

WinME --> 10GB --> FAT
WinPro --> 7GB --> FAT
Fedora --> 8GB --> EXT3

Through my use of Linux (an previous installations) I've come to understand that the /boot shoudl be in the first 1024 sectors of the HDD (I'm not exactly sure what that means) and that the /swap should be twice the size of the RAM.

So I'd just like some clarification on what partioning strategy I should use, especially keeping in mind that I plan on using Partion Magic if possible.

Thanks for your time.

It was true, but a year or more ago. RedHat to early 7.x version has the problem with 1024 cylinder. It's now fixed and the kernel can boot from everywhere.
Don't create swap partition bigger than 512MB. The rule with swap 2 times larger than RAM is no longer true. In a system with 512MB RAM swap will be used rarely, so it can be even 256MB. If you plan to do memory-consuming tasks (like movie generation etc), it may be bigger.

Your plan is good. I'd add one thing - separate /home (3GB partition or so). It makes it easier to change distributions (your own data is safe).

Ok thanks alot,

you provided me with some good information. Just one other thing I'd like you to touch on if you may. Considering (from what I understand) that I'm going to use my partitioning software to leave 8GB out of 30GB for linux, what syhould the size allocations be within that?

So far you seemed to have suggested:
/boot --> 96MB
/swap --> 512MB
/home --> 3072MB
?

What else migth I ask. I would like just to get this right. I've done installations before. But in those cases I let Linux consume the entire HDD and the partitioning was done automatically. Thanks to the RedHat installation for that.

Thank you.

One addition to my origianl post:

WinME --> 10GB --> FAT
WinPro --> 7GB --> FAT
Fedora --> 8GB --> EXT3
Data --> 5GB --> FAT

IT's a 30GB HDD

Sorry about that.