Just curious, but when I installed my mandrake 9.1, I had to do something with the hard drive like partition it or allocate space for linux or something. But I have 60 GB partition specifically for linux and I think I only gave 5 GB to the /home directory and 55 GB to the /root.

Do you think this is enough sufficient space for /home and /root?
If it is not enough space, is it too late change the hard drive to give 30 GB to /home and 30 GB to /root?

Comments and feedback please. Thanks

What are you going to be doing on it? How many users are going to be accessing it? If it is only a couple of people than 5 gigs is more than enough.

Personually for a home PC I would have made a / of about 10 gigs, swap of 512 mb and /home with the rest of the space.

For a server:
/ 500 mb
/usr 1.5 gb This depends on what you are using it for.
/var 750 mb If you are running a web, mail, firewall, etc. This is where logs and such are kept and sometimes user mail.
swap 512 mb
tmp 100 mb
home 10 gb This depends on the number of users that log in and use a GUI
The rest you could use as a partition to store info or keep some unpartitioned for extra incase you need more space in the future.

In my experience /root really doesn't need all that much space. I'd definitely skew things much, much higher for /home, as that is the directory that contains (or will contain) all your data.

One question would be: How much space is /root taking up right now? Whatever the answer, over time you can be sure that /home will grow. Therefore, I'd say you'd be much better off reserving the bulk of your disk for /home. Just my 2 cents -- J.W.

I am the only user of my computer as I don't like to share.

I am mainly using my linux to surf the internet and download themes/icons etc... to make it look like nice eye candy.

I think that one day when I get my Radeon 9700 Pro to work with games, then I may install some linux games on it. Is it safe to install my games into the /root areas?

I wish I gave equal space of 30 GB / 30 GB to my /home and /root.

Is it too late to change that now????

Micro - if you're the only user of your PC, then No, it's never too late to change. (It's not like anybody else is going to complain, right?)

So, I'd agree with your plan. To repartition, you can use a repartitioning tool (I personally like Boot It NG), or, if you really wanted to start with a totally clean slate, you can do an entire reinstall of Mandrake. That's probably overkill though, and I'd also point out that I'm not familiar with Mandrake. If it already comes with a tool that permits you to repartition, that would probably be your best bet.

Last comments: Obviously, it would be wise to back up any important data you have before doing anything with the partitions. You might also consider giving 15G to /root and 45G to /home. As I've said, over time your /home partition is likely to fill up much faster than /root. -- J.W.

As a rule you should never login as root unless you have to. Depending on what kin of games they are, depends on where they go.

great input guys!

So besides the partitioning software mentioned, does Mandrake have it's own partitioning thing?

I preferably would NOT like to reinstall everything. I spent so much time customizing my desktop to look good that I don't want to ruin it.