Greetings fellow Linux users


I am installing Debian 3.0 and I am at an impasse.

What I need to know is how to partition the hard drive

I have a 40 gb hard drive it is the second hd. I have 2 hard drives the first has windows xp and it is 80 GB


I need to partition my hard drive form what I read I make the boot partition about 10MB so I did that.

Now how many more partitions do I make and what do I call them.

There is only going to be one user (me) and of course the root

Also if any one things of something that I should know plz tell me



Thank you all

the 3 basic linux partitions are:
/boot 10-100mb
swap 2x RAM (but no more than 2gb)
/ rest of the drive

You can make /home its own partition, but if you are the only user there really is no need.

Well I forgot to ask another question when I set the partition there are servile things that it ask.

First: is primary or logical then it asks where to put it the end of the partition or the end or the beginning. Also do I have to change the partition names and how

Putting /home on its own partition is a really good idea. It lets you reinstall the OS if everything gets crazy or even switch distros without having to worry about backing up the entire /home tree.

one more thing it ask for swap partition now I do believe that is one that you gave me earlier however how do I set it as swap

for the swap partition:
in fdisk hit 't'
then choose the partition # that you want to be the swap
then type in '82' (that is the swap id)

for basic use i would say create partitions at the beginning or the drive. some people think that a swap partition is good at the end of the drive because the think that the disk reads faster there, it is old folklore at this point.