Partition Sizes

[sayonara]

I'm currently dualbooting FC2 and XP on my laptop with a view to moving completely to linux. I've got 40G, 9 of these are given over to windows (I have some fairly hefty CAD and simulation software), 5 alltogether for FC2 and the rest is for music videos and misc storage.

I'd like to put in a new partition so that I can try SUSE and later FC3. How big a partition should I put in to install the standard OS with development tools and maybe have room to compile a new kernel and stuff?

TIA

[crackers]

Since it appears you have most of your data elsewhere, I imagine that a 5-6Gb partion would be more than enough for a pretty standard distro install. I've got all my main data and a cart-load of Java development stuff on a 30Gb drive, along with FC2 - and I have about 50% of the drive available (the music and stuff is NFS mounted from the wife's FC1).

If you think about it like this:

700Mb (per ISO) x 3 disks (the bulk) x 2 (compression - and that's generous!) = 4.2 Gb

That's for the "install everything" option, roughly, which is what you'll likely not do. Now, from what I understand, Debian Unstable usually uses a lot more - but that's because the users of that distro will install everything, whether they ever even intend to use it or not.