Hello, I am currently trying to decide exactly how I want to set up my system. I have an Abit mobo with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, 4 GB RAM, XFX Nvidia 6800 series, 250 GB WD Sata/300. I am considering either using the current hard drive for everything, or getting a 500 GB then turning the 250 into a media only ntfs drive (non-bootable). Anyways, I am curious as to what is the best order to take and the best way to partition. I know I need to install XP first, which I plan to rarely, use, only for games I guess. I figure 15 gigs for XP. Then, I want to primarily use Fedora, as that is what I have been learning on over the past few months. Then Ubuntu just to mess around with. I have read a bit about the different partitions you can create, but I am a little confused.

I want swap, /, /boot, and /home on separate partitions. Are there any other partitons I should make? Like /var? Or /usr? And then how big should I make each one.

Also, Can Fedora and Ubuntu share any of these? I have kinda read its best not to, or if you share /home, use different usernames. I would prefer to use the same username, so I might not really share anything. Any thoughts? *The only partition I know I want to share if I go this route would be a completely separate /data partition, which I don't know if I should do ext3 since I plan to primarily use it for linux, or just be safe and do ntfs, hoping that it plays nicely while Im in either linux distro.

If I dont share any partitions (apart from /data), but I would like the same layout for Ubuntu as I have for Fedora. Do I have to name them differently? Like if Fedora has /home, do I have to make Ubuntu use /Uhome or something?

If I was unclear about anything please ask me to explain more, I tend to understand everything going on in my head but might not clearly illustrate the idea. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Hello and welcome to linux world
First of all you ask some basic questions which are answered all over the internet.

So my advice to you is to take the time to read about linux, about linux partitions & filesystem.

What I recommend is:

If you play games...I think you need a lot more then 15 gigs for windows...only if you play games like solitaire..
Ubuntu and fedora to share the same home partition?...don't think so...yes it can be done don't get me wrong..but.. you might encounter some strange behavior especially with desktop environments settings and others..so better to allocate space for each distro.

For a basic installation you only need / and /home and swap partitions...but..a good ideea is to also have /boot and /var ( var only if you have..well...a lot of variable data )
Don't really need separate /usr partition ..only if you want to share binaries over the network to others..(don't think you'll be doing that)

So what size...depends but I could say..
100 MB for /boot
2-4 G for swap
10 G for / (root)
for home...the rest :P

make the same partitions for the other linux distro..
have fun !!

But can 2 different linux installs use the same names for the partitions? like /boot and /Uboot? Or can there be 2 separate /boot partitions, and each distro knows whos is whos.

the partitions can have the same name (those are not names...they are mount points)

there names are just mount points...I don't know how to explain you..I am not a native English speaker..but one distribution will use only the partitions that you assign at installation.
Example:

To install fedora you create lets say 3 partition..so when you install it you assign mount points to these partitions.
Those mount points are for fedora and fedora only.

When you install ubuntu..it will see the fedora partitions..but not the mount points you assigned to those partitions...so you can create another 3 partitions for ubuntu and assign mount points for them also like ypu did for fedora.../boot / and /home ...

I hope you understand

Yeah it makes sense. /boot on Fedora and /boot on Ubuntu know to point to a specific partition, so the name won't interfere. I appreciate all the help!