Right. Nice easy question. You can all compete to sell your favourite ways of managing your filesystems.

I've got three partitions for my linux installation: root, swap and home. Root and home are both over a gig and are squeezed on my hard disk next to windows. Root seems to be filling up very quickly, I have about 300Mb left. I know i can't use swap.

Basically, I don't get the whole difference between the different filespaces and the most efficient way to use them. I'm aware i have my space in home, which is where i am currently putting everything. For example, this seems a bit wierd cos I have the files for firebird and thunderbird just sitting in there, should they ideally be sitting some place else?

And when I compile and install themes where do they go? Do they go somewhere into the dark recesses of the root, or do they remain where I install them from? See, no one explains stuff like this, which is a shame cos i hate bill gates but he's got me over a barrel.

;-)

most rmp (or other packages) will install stuff on your root partition.
1gb is painfully small for anything.

what file system do you use for windows? if its fat, and you need to, you can mount it read-write and steal some space from windows if you need to. Alternatvley, you could go find a copy of Partitionmagic, and resize some partitions to give yourself more space.

aye, i'm alright for space at the mo and i have bootitng for all my partitioning needs, dunno if it resizes linux partitions tho, can i resize a windows one and drake partition to do the linux ones?

so, the rpm stuff goes in root. what about stuff that isn't in rpm's where do i put that? like my themes? where do they install to?

On a home desktop machine, especially one with limited space, I generally only have one filesystem: /. Having separate partitions for /usr , /home , /var , / is highly recommended for servers, for security and efficiency reasons. However, on a home machine, few if any of these reasons apply, and it can be frustrating to have a 1.3G file to store and you have 1.6G of space, but it's split up into 800MB on one partition and 800MB on another.

so when i installed dividing three gigs into two and calling them \ and \home was a bit unecessary and i could have had a three gig \ or maybe just a small \home, like 500MB?

The advantage of a separate /home is that when you upgrade or change distro's you can retain all the stuff in /home, as your personal settings for your programs are in .* files in your home directory and your data is usually there too in subdirectories.

gnu parted may allow you to resize the partitions if you have some /home space you'd like to move to /root.

You may free up somes space in root by removing some applications that you don't use. If you use RPM to install apps then rpm -e is the way to go or if Debian based use its program removal utility. Often the .* files in your /home/$user directory will have to be removed manually.

i'm starting to get a bit concerned about what i install and where it goes. i'm still a newbie and i seem to have mixed success in installing stuff and i'm afraid that this is leading to "crap" accumilating in my filesystem.

is there any easy way to know what is installed and where and then to remove stuff i don't want? I understand the rpm system in mandy fine but but it's the non-rpm stuff that gets me - where does it go? and how do i make sure that stuff (e.g. profiles and extensions) gets installed in my home directory so i can keep em all if change my distro (as mentioned above)?

Non-RPM stuff? You mean source packages (which you compile) and binary packages (which you don't)? They install into /usr/local. If you install something from source, keep the source directory because you need it to uninstall the program (by doing to the source directory and typing "make uninstall.")

Personally, I have three partitions: a swap partition, the root partition, and a /persist partition that holds things like fonts, MPlayer codecs, the Wine file system, and other things that I'd want to keep after reinstalling. When I want to change or upgrade distributions I can wipe the root partition, leave the /persist partition alone, and be back up and running fairly quickly.

If I don't make multiple system partitions, I make / around 3.5 G or so.Here are some links for your perusal.

# Linux filesystem structure
Directory Navigation Help File
Filesystems, Directories, and Devices Help File
Proper Filesystem Layout
Advanced filesystem implementor's guide (requires registration)

# Guides to software management
LNAG - How do I install a program I downloaded from the Internet?
Rute Guide's software explanation
You might want to check out CheckInstall to manage source code installations/uninstallation