Partitioning and Filesystems: Safe, reliable, and performance-based
It took me some time to figure out what’s the acceptable balance. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. So adapt this configuration to your needs.
Anyhow, a generalized guideline for partitioning and filesystems is as follows:
/(root)::ext4::minimum 3GB
I've seen people with even 1GB partitions, but to be on the safer side, we'll use 3GB.
/usr::ext4::min. 3GB
Make it however big you want, as its size depends on what you plan to install, a minimal install, or a full-fledged developer workstation. 3GB should be sufficient for most installations.
/var::reiserfs::min. 4GB
The logs stored here may be very small in size, but they are like zombies - stupid, but vast in numbers. I’ve seen peoples’ systems going unstable due to running out of space for log files. So don't be stingy if you have the space.
/home::ext4/xfs::min. 1GB
Make this as large as you want. This is where your personalizations, settings, and user files will go. Ext4 is a safe choice, but if you store and process a large number of big files, like movies, audio files, or large databases, xfs (X File System) will give you better performance.
swap::approx. twice your physical memory (RAM)
On modern systems with 1GB+ RAM, this isn’t a huge performance booster. So why have it? Answer: stability. Ask a developer, often there are cases when even a Linux app gets a memory leak and starts eating up the available RAM. If there is no swap, when the RAM runs out, you are in deep bovine excrement. So if you unfortunately happen to have a memory leak, which is especially common for developers testing new code, having a swap partition will prolong the time you have to make a decision by giving you some warning before the avoidable crash. Unnecessary swapping can degrade performance, but the vm.swappiness=10 tweak (discussed later) can counter it.
*Note: A separate /boot partition may be necessary in a RAID configuration. No performance benefits notice in non-RAID configurations. Just had a load of booting issues instead.
The aforementioned configuration serves a dual purpose:
1) Allows you to keep your settings, personal data and personalization between distribution upgrades.
The separate /home and /usr partitions are for that. Settings and personal data from /home, and installations from /usr.
2) Reliable, safe.
If for any reason there is a filesystem corruption, you can still boot into Linux and fix them, as only that one particular partition will be corrupted. Oh well, just hope /root isn’t the one to be damaged. I know of no other solution but an OS reinstall to that.
As for filesystem choices, here’s a justification for selection of the ones mentioned:
1) ext4: No reason to doubt why it is so mainstream and a default in most OS’s. Most versatile, most widely-adopted, most stable, and best general-purpose performance. Only downside I know is low performance with Sqlite databases.
2) reiserfs: While this may not be the best general-purpose FS, it shows exceptional performance when dealing with a large number of small files, thus considered a good choice for /var. I’d actually love to use reiser4, with the Phoronix benchmarks promising triple the performance of reiserfs, but with Hans Reiser in prison, I don’t see it going into the mainline kernel anytime soon, so I’ll settle for stability.
3) xfs: While this can be the worst choice for /var, due to it’s poor performance with small files, it has exceptional performance with large files. Hence a good choice for a multimedia server, or large databases.
Well well well, keeping this in mind, refer to Lee’s Step-by-step installation guides for the particular distro. Most distributions’ installation process is pretty much similar, so don’t worry. If you are lost with a particular distro, feel free to ask us for a guide. 
That being said, let’s begin replacing the not-so-great components, category-wise, shall we? 
