Well there are 2 types of partitions. Primary and logical aka "secondary". There can only be maximum of 4 primary partitions and unlimited logical partitions on a particular hard drive. Usually it's a good idea to have one primary "/boot" partition and one root "/" partition and logical "/home" partition for most linux installations. And if you want to dual boot between windows have one primary partition for windows.

Reason to have a separate /home partition is if something goes wrong in your root partition you will at least have all your important documents, movies, music...in-tact. Also a separate boot partition ensures that your pre-installed windows boot record doesn't get messed up during installation. Linux will install boot record on a separate /boot partition instead of replacing windows boot record!!

thanks

this information is really very helpful for me... but after studying alot I think the system only allows 15 logical partitions..

kindly advise.

Regards,

Rashid

and a most important question of my life

that if you try to install any program through RPM or Yum utility
sometimes he gives error that some library files missing etc.

then How can I get these missing library files. or if they installed then where is wrong..

waiting for reply

Regards,


Rashid

most of the time if you try to install a program using rpm or yum it will automatically download and satisfy the required dependencies. So there should not be a lot of problem. But if you are to ever become a linux power user it is extremely important you know how to install packages from source codes.
I think reading up on the following would be very helpful rather than me explaining in this post:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-B...OWTO.html#toc2

Actually i did some search and there seems to be contradictory information on the number of logical partitions that a hard drive can have.

Some say 15 like you said, some say as many partitions as there are alphabets in english language (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...ported-windows), and some say as many as 60 or more...http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-424244.html

If someone finds a definite answer please be kind enough to mention it...

But either way I doubt anyone would use more than 15 logical partitions....

thanks

your welcome hope you have a great time using linux!