Linux installation. Plz help with partition size and arrangement

[slimbim]

Hello.
I am about to install Linux so I can learn.
I have a 30 gig drive. Am going to install Mandrake 8.1.
I heard that it's not that good to just have one big partition. So I was wondering if anyone can give me any guidelines on how to separate my partitions, for like /home, /usr, etc ( I don't even know what those things are yet). And if I wanted to upgrade to future versions of linux without losing my own data and programs or freshly installing everything.

So...

30 Gig Drive. 256 RAM. Linux Mandrake 8.1
I need to know how much space I should assign to each partition.

Thanks a bunch everyone.

 

[Nothinman]

I keep my setup simple, creating seperate partitions for everything just makes it more complicated.

/ - 4G - This is where everything will be installed as long as you use a package manager.
swap - 512M - 2x your memory not totally necessary, but since you have the disk space it's a good idea, since I have more than 1 disk I usually split it up between them because Linux will load balance them in a sort of RAID 0 fashion.
/home - everything else, this is where all your data will go and as long as it's seperate you can format / and reinstall the OS without losing your data all you want.

Some people seperate /usr/local because that's the default for programs compiled from source, I don't do that very often so I don't worry about it.

 

[n0cmonkey]

For my recent linux installation I created 3 partitions. One being /boot (which was unnecessary, but I wanted it), /, and swap. I did not want to bother with making various partitions for all of the different things I do, mostly because I am not used to linux yet. So for newbies I recommend keeping it as simple as possible. For my OpenBSD machine on the other hand, I know a little bit more about how it works and what I want to do with it. That helps me figure out exactly what needs to be done. I have partitions for just about everything. The /home is a good idea, but I have several machines and backup everyone on to the one Im not formatting so its not a huge deal for me.

 

[Fatt]

The guy teaching me linux said I should do this for my RH install:

/dev/hda7 = / (root) = about 250 megs

/dev/hda1 = /boot = about 25 megs

/dev/hda5 = /usr = about 1/4 of your hard drive

/dev/hda6 = /var = about 500 megs

hostname:/home = whatever you have left over.


I will NOT pretend to really understand all that, but he did mention that I could always choose "server install" when doing setup and let the software do all the work.
As I understand it, most of the time it's a good idea to just go with whatever defaults the programmers put in because they most likely did it for a reason.

That exhausts the tiny clue I have. Good luck.