[SGVLUG] newbie qu: HDD partitions

[Jeff Kutz]

Subj: newbie qu: HDD partitions

I am going to load Fedora on a Dell Latitude C600 (1 GHz) laptop for a 
dedicated Linux learn/play computer.  I am going with Fedora because it came 
with the book Red Hat Linux by Mark G Sobell.

My question is what would be the smartest way to partition the 20 GB hard 
drive.  The author talks about partitions but it seems more like 
subdirectories that he is talking about.  The way I read the book he would 
have me putting in some half-dozen partitions.  I am coming from the 
DOS/Windows world.  Am I missing something here in the transition?

He talks about where I might run into a situation like a DOS attack and I 
could suddenly get a truly huge collection of log files that would fill up a 
partition and block other functions that need some disk room to operate.  It 
has been my practice, even in the DOS/Windows world, to create a separate 
partition for my data files.

If you are starting from scratch, with a dedicated Linux laptop, how many 
partitions would you build and what would you establish in each one?  Would 
I maybe want three partitions, one for data, one for the OS and 
applications, and one for swap and log files?

Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.

Jeff