Even *I* sometimes happen to delete the whole partition table and reset it, five times in the installation process... But for those who have NO IDEA on how to partition linux... here is a guideline How-to

The conventions on the names goes like this:

/dev is the device filesystem.
hda means the Primary HarDDrive (HDD) on Primary IDE controller
hdb means the slave HDD on Primary IDE controller
hdc means the Primary HDD on Secondary IDE controller
hdd means that slave HDD on Secondary IDE controller
ext2 is the second edition of the extended linux filesystem
ext3 is thejournalled version of ext2
ReiserFS is the best FS apparently that is journalled and linux...
swap is the extension of the RAM on your computer. This is so inux doesn't screw up your files on your  system like WINDOWS when it seldom crashes.

hdx 1-4 is primary partitions... and hda5-n is logical partitions.

Experimental linux/windows config:

The first time linux user will want to keep linux there and be ready to use windows whenever they get tired of trying linux. (often, because they don't know how to configure it), the best thing to do in that case is the following...

If you start with this:

/dev/hda1  NTFS (winXP) 80 GB

You can easilly do this:

/dev/hda1 NTFS (winXP) 80 GB
/dev/hda4 extended partition
/dev/hda5 ext3 (lin) mounted at /
/dev/hda6 SWAP

Desktop Linux/Win config:

If you want a fully fonctionning Linux Desktop... You have multiple choices

You can start with this:

/dev/hda1 NTFS (winXP) 80 GB

And then you have choices... a standard linux distro will also install dual bootloader.

How much for root?

A good, suggested, minimum space is 1.5 GB ... that is no graphical interfaqce, nothing but a remote file server.

If you want a recommanded space, you can allow root to be 3 gig... for a fully fonctionning desktop with extra space, give it 5 gig. For fully fonctionning desktop with extra space, and your own app and server daemons... use 7.5 gig

How much for Swap?
Normally, twice the amount of RAM you have... for hibernation and to protect the computer from crashing if you ran out of RAM.

How much for home?
As much as you want.