Linux partitioning

People often ask me what is the best way to partition a PC used for a laptop/ home desktop or professional workstation for Linux.

Here are some ideas on how you should do it.

1. If you plan to dual boot, the first primary partition can be Windows – Fat 32, this makes the partition read-write enabled on Linux, so makes it easy to switch files between Linux and Windows.
2. The second primary partition is Linux mounted as /
3. The third primary partition is Linux mounted as /data (optional)
4. The forth partition is extended for the rest of the file system
5. The firth partition is a logical partition formatted as swap which is twice the size of RAM but need not be more than 1GB for a office workstation/home PC.
6. The sixth partition is a logical partition mounted as /home which will use up the balance space..

The third partition can be used when you wish to install another version of Linux without disturbing your existing one. For example I am using SUSE Linux 10.1 which is installed in the second partition. When I want to install 10.2, I can install it in the third partition and mount the same (firth partition) as /home.

The second (mounted as /) and third Linux partitions can be 10-15 GB.