Ok so i wanna have another shot @ linux and I'm going to be using fedora core 3.

What are the going standards for partitioning etc.

I remember in my network sys admin class it was suggested a seperate partition for logs, modules or some other things, but i can't remember back that far.

Are there any other standards or generally good practise i should get into?

Im guessing (hoping) its not hard to set up things like DHCP, umm... some sort of routing/internet connection sharing.

Firewall recommendations?

Any other recommendations (i.e. should i bother with squid? What modules should i install (pc will be used for programming in c++ (mostly MPI cluster programming) as well as web based languages like php, asp, html etc, as well as a general use desktop pc (listening to music, browsing web, watching movies etc through tv out) and any nifty little tools?)

Any useful commands?

Generally anything that will help out a complete linux noob.

Bad habits are hard to kick, so i figured it would be best to get into good practise from day 1

My 2 cents:

/boot
~100mb, this seems to be a general trend, good chances the installer will try and do this automatically
/
~2-6gb, everything that dosent fit, most of the binarys/sources will land in this partition, so it really depends on how much your installing.
/home/
~100mb-10gb+, user files, i like to keep them seperate in case linux goes down (unlikly )
[swap]
~ram*2, no bigger then about 1gb...

With internet sharing you should have a look at NAT IP masquerading, and i think dhcp will be a peice of cake, as fedora has some nice gui's.

If you have the space to spare, i strongly reccomend a "everything" install, it will have everything there for you... if you need somthing get the rpm (just google for somthing like [rpmname] rpm fedora 3)...
Firewall recommendations?

mmm ...

the basic , the prime directive of linux world

Use root only when nesesary (or Sudo )

may be it is also know by everyone but you _SHOULD_ look at http://tldp.org

Thanks guys, hopefully either later tonight or tomorrow i'll be reporting back with linux installed
*crosses fingers... if these downloads ever finish :S*
That or its back to win2k3 for me

Linux is easy, it took me a few goes at it, Mandrake and Fedora but I still went back to WinXP. Then I bit the bullet, dumped Windows so I'd have no choice but to learn. it's easy now, make so much sense and it's so quick to do stuff. Before I could use my computer for 2 hours and not actually get anything productive done, now I can't. I just get bored because I have my UI tweaked perfectly and any tasks I do are simple and the way to do it effective.

After that ramble, story juice is that it makes sense.

mine is a-like

I was a Windows user and started dumping Win programs

MS office -> open Office
Messenger -> Gaim
ETC...

in a moment i was using all open source apps for windows soo ... WTF ... im goin to use linux too

Sooo im using ubuntu linux now (as my full time desktop so no dual boot for me )

I still consider myself a but i learned a lot from linux i only want to learn more and more

For a typical desktop there really is no need to create seperate partitions for logs and such. It's a very good idea for servers, but not needed for a desktop.

The easiest partitioning scheme for a newbie desktop is to put everything into one root partition "/ ". The installer will create the needed directories for /boot, /home. etc. This gives you the added advantage of 1. Not having one partition too small and running into lack of space problems. 2. Not wasting space by creating a partition larger than really needed.

You'll need a swap partition. The basic rule of thumb is to make it 2 times the size of your RAM. If you have 256M of RAM, you'll want 512M of swap. This isn't a hard rule, just a guideline.

As I'm pretty stingy with my HDD space, I still use the single partition scheme, keeping backups of my /home partition on CD using partimage as well as a backup on the entire system at key points.

I recommend creating a backup of your newly installed system as soon as everything is working exactly how you want it, as well as a backup every time you make any major change to the system. This will make it very easy to restore your system if you trash it at some point.

The main thing is to be patient and not give up at the first sign of trouble. There is a learning curve to Linux just like anything else and it will take time for you to learn how to troubleshoot and solve problems as they occur.

It's handy to put /home on a seperate partition. That way if you don't like the distro you're using or something and you change, you can keep all your settings and most of your personal files will be in your /home/yourname so you can keep them too

If you intend on setting your machine up as a server then you want separate partitions for /, /boot, /var, /tmp and /home and maybe even /etc. This is my personal choice, you could have another partition scheme if you wanted but the idea is that I have separate partitions for constantly changing data (/var) and another for slowly changing data (/home) I have /tmp on another so that if something goes wrong and it starts filling up quickly it won't bring the system to a stand still as / is not being filled up. /etc on another incase I have to do a reinstall I still have all my configuration.

But for a desktop I have 1 partition for / and one for /home as the computer is less likely to be compromised. Both have swap partitions. Remember, using partitions so that you can reinstall systems without losing user data is no replacement for backing up user data to other media.

Thanks all for the feedback ;-)

I finally got it working, took a few tries. After installation the screen would just blank out. After reinstalling a few times i finally figured out that it was the TV-OUT on my radeon 9800 that was causing the problems. Unplugging it fixed it but i had to reinstall again anyway because even tho it showed up on the monitor it was just a blank screen with a cursor.

But im here now and thats all that matters .

Now im guessing next on the list should be to install drivers & update. Lets see how that goes.... Look out for me in the network forum if/when I have trouble sharing the net connection and setting up DHCP .