A big thank you to all you dear Linux gurus who replied

Things are getting clearer to me now.

OK I'll go with 4GB home & root AND 50MB /boot.

But I intend to store LOTS of personal data (like clips of DVD movies) AND ALSO install/compile LOTS of new software. I hope the setup you recommended is IDEAL for my needs.

Am I right?

Just give me ONE LAST AFFIRMATIVE NOD and I'll go with it bcoz I've seen that some people create VERY SMALL root partitions (less than 2GB). Do they do this bcoz they know that they won't be installing/compiling lots of new software?????

Thanks for ur help. I'm a total newbie so if u could plz explain to me in simpler terms why I need 50MB /boot partition it would be really much appreciated; bcoz I know most newbies don't create or bother with seperate boot partitions.

Thanks again & reply soon.

Take care
CoolBlue

If you don't want to complicate things, you'll need:
10G of / , if you intend to install LOTS of programs.
As maximum /home as you can if you want to store lots of data.

the 50 is for kernels, grub config files, kernel config files, etc... if you have say 4 kernels you are using, plus you grub/lilo stuff, configs etc.. you will want at least a little room.

As far as your partitioning, do it any way you like. It's all personal preference, as some like everything under one partition and some like boot, home, usr, and whatever on different partitions. It does make it a little easier to repair with multiple partitions, but that's not a big issue.

by the way, what distro are you going to install?

Thanks again to all.

I intend to install SimplyMEPIS 3.3 - THE BEST DISTRO IN THE WORLD!!!

tAKE CARE
Cool Blue

As I said here, consider a storage partition separate from /home. It is good to be able to format the /home partition if you set up a new distribution. I just experienced this after installing Debian Sarge; it found Gnome references in /home/me, and I had to clean up references to uninstalled programs - and when I checked, it held a lot of hidden files from Gaim, Evolution, several Mozilla programs and several window managers.

there's a big difference between /root and root. /root is the home dir for the super user/administrator and root(/) is the main linux partition. They might use small partitions for /root 'cos the admin account shouldn't be used as a normal account so there's need for alot of space. if you want to install alot of appsthen your root(/) needs to be quite big(6gb for a 'install everything' FC3 install).

think of you /home dir as your 'My Documents' dir in XP, or better yet, your D: partition that you keep all of mp3's and divx's in just in case xp decides to throw a 'corrupt ntkernel' tantrum requiring a format/re-install. so make your /home dir the same size.

IMHO 10GB is not big enough for what you are doing anyways. Video files can get huge. You can take up 10 GB with just a few hours of video (depending on compression).


Another reason certain people might have a very small / partition is because they have a large /usr partition which is where most if not all of your programs will go. You do need a certain amount of space for /etc /var/ /boot and all those, but if you have a /usr partition you do not need a very big / partition.

I have /home on the root of my various distros then /mnt/home and /mnt/music so as to be able to access them from any install, it also allows me to maintain different settings for different systems, if i had a shared /home kde would look the same on every linux which I don't want, i want a main system then a bare bones install for work, so i don't get distracted! Thats just how I do it though, as stated its personal preference.