Hi Everyone,

I am completely new to Linux. I am intending to install Ubuntu Hardy Heron on an Acer Aspire M1201 with 160GB hard disk and 512MB of RAM.

I have done a lot of searching and reading and it seems that a sensible partition scheme is to have three partitions:
/ - ext3 (referred to as "root")
/home - ext3
/swap - swap

I understand that the swap partition should be twice the size of my RAM, and the home partition will use all the space that is available after creating the root and swap partitions, but I have seen recommendations for the size of the root partition ranging from 3GB to 15GB. I have plenty of space, but that doesn't mean I want to waste any. Neither do I want to end up having to reinstall in three months because my root partition is too small.

So my question is: what is a safe minimum size for the root partition, allowing for installing lots of software as I explore Linux and not skimping at all?

Thank you.

Welcome to LQ!!

You're going to get opinions that are all over the map, so we might as well get started....

First, you don't really need a separate partition for /home. If you are going to have more than one distro, then I recommend a separate data partition which can be shared.

Second, leave empty (unpartitioned) space. You can always resize/add partitions later.

For exact recommendations, we'd need to know your HD size. Assuming it's at least 80GB, you can't go wrong with:

swap 1GB (many people put it at the end)
/ 20GB
data 30Gb (mount this at /mnt/data) and then link into /home/username
leave the rest blank

1DVD = ~5GB, typical compression ratio (binaries) ~3:1
The latest Debian fits on about 3 DVDs, so if you installed absolutely everything you might use up as much as 60GB (text documentation compresses much better than binry executables).

The smallest partition I've been making for my desktop and laptop uses in the past 3 years has been 8GB. 20 is probably big enough for you even if you try out a lot of software then forget it exists and leave it on the system. A typical messy system for me (with dozens of programs I never use) is still under 8GB.

There is no standard answer for a system. It will depend upon the applications and use of your system. Many applications and folks like to place their websites in the /var/www/directory which resides by default off the / directory. If you plan on having large websites files you will need more room in the / directory partition. MySQL data files are store by default in the /var/lib/mysql directory which is also in the / partition. If you plan on having large data files you will want to have a large partition for the / directory.

If you use your system mainly for desktop applications and use the /home directory to store most files then you will want to have a large /home partition.

Partitioning will depend upon how you use your system.

1 GB - swap
10 GB - /
~leftover - /home

Having a /home partition is good if you ever change distros, or reinstall for some reason. That way you don't have to backup all your stuff.