I am sorry to ask there questions they must have been ask before.
I am new to Linux and would like to know which the best Linux
distribution to use is. I also have a question about Partition to me
it looks like a minefield, I have a new 20 GB drive with no OS
installed, so would the partition table below be ok. The system is
Pentium 3 600Mhz, 256Mb of Ram, 20Gb h/d and ATI Rage Fury 32Mb
graphics card.

Sorry to ask these silly questions but one as to start some ware.

/ (Root) = 100mb
/usr = 5gb
/boot = 50mb
/tmp = 500mb
/var = 1gb
/usr/local = 2gb
/home = 2gb
/opt = 500mb
/swap = 512mb

--
Boby

Boby wrote:
The choice of distribution depends more or less on your taste. I don't
believe that there is a final answer, which to use. Just give them a
try. It also highly depends on your needs. You can find an overview with
a short description of many distributions on http://www.linux.org/

BTW: The more partitions you have the less flexible you are in the case
you need much free hd-space.
data which is of temporary interest. E.g. compiling, storing
Disk-Images, creating backup files, video editing/encoding and other
stuff not possible in home directories. In /var/ftp I periodically
mirror different subdirectories of some ftps for use in my LAN and so
on. I don't know if you need to do anything of that but decide yourself.
Also users can use /var/tmp when they don't have enough space left in
there home-directories for some reason. A cron-job can clean the it
periodically so it can only be used for temporary data.

HTH


--

Robert...

Boby wrote:
Until you better understand Linux I would keep it simple.
Depending which distro you are going to use I would only make 3
partitions until you understand things better.

/ = 4 - 6 GB depending which distro and what you plan to
install and do with the system. Is it going to be a server or
just a desktop system?

/home rest of disk.
swap 2 times physical memory upto 512MB max for swap, again
depends on what the system will be used for. If it will be a
server then you may want more swap space.

--
Confucius: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with The Linux Counter. http://counter.li.org/
Slackware 9.1.0 Kernel 2.4.24 SMP i686 (GCC) 3.3.2
Uptime: 10 days, 21:56, 1 user, load average: 1.09, 1.14, 1.10

Boby wrote:
Personally, I don't see the need for seperating out /boot and would
leave it as part of /.

I'd combine /var and /tmp into one. (Symlink /tmp into /var/tmp.)

I usually symlink /opt to /usr/local/opt. (Neither is used by my
distro's packages. They're both locally installed stuff on my system.)
2GB should be plenty for the combined total.

I'd rethink the proportions of /usr and /home. 5GB for /usr seems a bit
much while 2GB for /home seems somewhat skimpy (although it depends on
what kind of data you're likely to keep in /home).


Now that I've said all that, I should point out that partitioning
schemes vary widely from system to system. No matter how you partition
now, you'll probably find yourself wanting to repartition at some point
in time in the future when you've got a better understanding of your own
needs and the advantages/disadvantages of various schemes.

Boby wrote:
simply use two partitions, swap of 512MB, and a /Linux of all the
remainder of the hard drive.

Knoppix installs on my 550 and 600 mhz machines in about 22 minutes.
I do save the configuration file (about 30kb) to a floppy, just to have
it, and sometimes use it as a cheatcode when loading any GNU/Linux
distro on that machine...

Boby (bobykje@aka.freeserve.com) writes:
When I first installed Linux to use, I had a 2.1gig hard drive. I took
out 96megs for a swap partition, and then kept the rest complete. Two
and a half years later, I still haven't run out of space, though obviously
that depends on what someone is using it for.

What I did regret, a few months in, was not setting a separate partition
for /home My original intention was to try some other distributions,
out of curiosity, but once I actually started using it all, it became
to much trouble to start again. Had I set a separate partition for
/home, it would have made it very easy to try other things without
harming the stuff that I really needed to backup.

A lot of talk about separate partitions for different directories
comes from serious server applications. It helps to protect things,
and maybe more important, it makes it really easy to add more space
by adding another hard drive. If directories that have a tendency to
fill up are on separate partitions, then it makes it real easy to
mount a new partition on another drive.

But if you start partitioning too much, you may find that you've
allocated wrong, and there isn't an easy way of getting space back
if you need it. You may have plenty of space on the hard drive, but
if you have a large partition that ends up not being used, but a too
small partition for a directory that fills up, it won't help you much.

I just got a hand me down computer, with a 20gig hard drive, and I
was installing Linux on it the other day. I set aside the swap partition,
and then made 2 5gig partitions and one large one of the rest. But
I installed just on one of the 5gigs. I was tempted to set a separate
partition for /home but at the moment I can't be bothered. Part of
me is thinking 5gigs is pretty small, but it's 2.5 times what I had
total before. One thing I realized is that I do have lots of flexibility,
because I do have plenty of extra space. Once I get things running,
shifting stuff over from an older computer, I can use the spare partitions
for backup space, and then reinstall with a separate /home partition.
Depending on the final outcome, I can always use the extra 5gig for
a /home partition, or divide up the large nearly 10gig partition.
Since I've basically saved that space for later, it's really easy
to make use of it later once I decide what I want. Since I'm not
actually using the extra space, repartitioning it will not affect
the main 5gig partition, unlike if I partitioned it all and used
various partitions as directories.

As others have said, what you are using it for defines the size
of the directories. Servers will be different from home use.
For home use, the most dynamic directory will likely be /home
especially if you are doing things like burning CDs or collecting
graphics. Other than Wordperfect, I never needed to add much
in the way of large applications beyond what came with the distribution.
That would vary with useage too, with this new installation I
expect only a finite amount of space for applications.

Michael