Question about partitioning
 

I am dool-booting Windows 98 SE and Debian Linux. I am making two partitions for windows (swap and promary) and I am thinking about making 3 partitions for Linux (swap, root, everything else). Should I make all 3 partitions in fdisk or do something different? If I make my partitions before installing Debian can I tell the installer to install root, swap, and everything else to different partitions already made?
Thanks in advance for your help.

windows doesnt use specific "Swap" partitions, and will not be able to write to a partition created as such. Windows 9x creates the swap file automatically in the system partition (where the OS is installed)

Re: Question about partitioning
 

I'd make a single FAT32 partition for Windows 98 SE unless you want to create a second partition to isolate your personal data from the Windows system. That's not mandatory, one partition works fine, but keeping your personal stuff separate might make backup and restore activities easier - you'll know which stuff to backup up - the Windows system when you change something, and the data, as often as you save it.

On the Linux end of things, swap, root, and everything else might work, depending on what you mean by "everything else". Minimally, you need a Linux partition for your root file system and a Linux swap partition for swap space. Some people separate /, /usr, /var, and /tmp each into their own separate file system and partition, and some people also create a separate partition for /home and any other directories they regularly use. This privides better data isolation for added security and for carefully controlled data backups. For casual use, however, partitioning / and swap works just fine. Though I know the benefits of separating all those partitions, I use / and swap for my casual desktop system.

I have a similar problem:
im going to be putting fedora on this system when it finishes downloading... i need to know how to set up the patitions...
i have a 1 gig windows partition (im keeping this as a safety net)
a 10 gig audio drive (fat 32 which id like to access from Fedora.. if possible :S)
a 10 gig scsi drive
another 10 gig scsi drive
and a 4.5 gig scsi drive (swop??)
what partitions should i put where? what bits of the file system would would benifit the most form being on the isolated 4.5 gig drive? /swop? and what else?

i intend to be using the computer for audio production if that changes anything...

Linux partitioning:


/ - Root: good for the kernel and stuff that goes with it.
/usr - where many of the installed applications go
/opt - on some distributions, where other installed apps go
/etc - where system settings go
/home - where the user's directories go
/swap - a relatively small partition for the swap info (1/2 to 4x your RAM depending on the size of your memory)

It's useful to make /home a separate partition so that if you want to re-install the OS, or make an upgrade, you don't have to disturb your user data,... only your installed programs.

I usually follow this rule:

BBBBIIIIGGGG /home partition (especially if you like streaming video or audio files, or big games that aren't native or are installed not as root).

small /swap partition

Pretty Big / and /usr partitions, and if your distro uses one, pretty big /opt partition. But they usually don't need to be as big as your /home partition.

If you don't do more than web surfing and word processing, /home can actually be pretty small.

Thanks! and... happy birthday :)

so...
i can use one of the 10 gig scusies for /home and /usr
root - '/' /opt and /etc could all go under '/' in the other 10 gig drive
then i could have the a 1 gig patition (256x4) of the 4 gig drive for /swop on its own so the computer can access it quickley

can anyone see any problems with that?

thanks again!