OK, let's examine the logic behind the partition scheme Sobell lays out:
/boot 100 megabytes / 500 megabytes (swap) two times the amount of ram /home As large as necessary, depends upon # of users /tmp Minimum 100 megabytes /usr Minimum 1.7 - 5.5 GB depending what I install /var Minimum 500 Megabytes
/boot is where the kernel and some associated files live. Because of PC BIOS limitations, the kernel *must* be within the first 1024 cylinders on the disk, so you should make that the first partition.
The old "make your swap twice your physical memory" thing is really just a suggestion - it's not set in stone. On a laptop system with 512MB memory, I would be pretty surprised if you overflowed that RAM and needed a whole bunch of swap. I would probably make my swap partition smaller - more like 256-512MB.
Now normally /var is a separate partition because that's where everything writes log files. If you get some weird out of controll process that starts writing tons of logfile entries, you want to have /var on a separate partition so that the OS partition doesn't fill up the system crashes.
/tmp is also used by all sorts of processes, so it is also potentially at risk of filling up. Making it it's own partition isn't a bad idea.
/home is where your personal stuff will go, and it's good to have /home as a separate partition so that if you need to reinstall Linux you can just leave /home alone and it will be there when the new OS is installed.
/usr is where all the core OS stuff goes.
I wouldn't usually contradict Mark Sobell, but since you are just setting up a small system for educational purposes, I would do this:
/boot (200MB) swap (512MB) / (the whole rest of the drive)
And here's why: Yes, there is some small danger of logfiles or runaway processes filling up your root partition, but in the 10 years I've been running Linux I've only seen that on servers, never on a laptop. If you do this then you can use all of the remaining part of your hard drive. You'll never run into the situation where /home has tons of free space but you guessed wrong and /usr is full and you can't install new software. In my opinion (which is only worth what you've paid for it), the risks are far outweighed by the benefit of not having to take guesses at what your disk usage will be.
Cheers,
Thomas
