You do need a home directory.  It doesn't absolutely need to be a separate 
partition, but people usually do it that way - it makes it more convenient 
when you upgrade.  The remaining partitions (other than swap, of course, and 
sometimes boot) are typically thrown into the root partition.  For a 
graphical Linux install, with X and KDE or Gnome and several packages, 2GB is 
a bare minimum size for the root partition, and 8 GB is usually pretty 
comfortable.  But if I were you, I give a few gig to the /home partition and 
everything else to root.  Your mileage may vary.

Vaughn Treude
Nakota Software, Inc.

On Monday 10 February 2003 22:53, you wrote:
> I am installing Debian linux on my machine and wanted to know the optimal
> disk usage for the various partitions.
>
> I have about 33 gig of unpartionted space.
>
> What size would be good for the following partitions?
>
> /home - do I even need a home directory if this is a one user system?
> /var
> /tmp
> /root
> /boot - the boot partition I made 8 megabytes.
> /swap - the swap partition I made 512 megabytes.
> /usr
>
> I installed this earlier and did not make the /usr partition big enough and
> then could not install all the packages.
>
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