partition sizes

[Justin Ekis]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering about the best size for my partitions. (And no I won't
be asking questions every step of the way, at least I hope not. This is
just a topic I couldn't find one definitive answer for.)
Partition magic finally arrived yesterday, and I ran the new operating
system wizard and chose Linux. I wasn't sure what sizes to use so I kept
all the defaults. Only thing I changed was  I chose ext3 rather than the
default ext2 for the Linux partition's filesystem. Now I'm wondering if
I should resize them. This setup looks a bit odd, and I probably should
have done it myself.
Here's what my partitions look like. 
First is the swap partition, the program sized it at 502 MB. (I've heard
about a million different ideas about swap size, so I just went with the
default, even though it seems rather large. I have 256 megs of ram.)
The Linux partition is 15.84 GB. (I know the redhat installation guide
says you only need about 2 to 4 GB, but that seems quite small. Maybe
I'm just used to programs being so big on windows.)
Finally windows gets the last 22.95 GB.
Are there any problems with this? 
And what's this I hear about some bios chips not being able to boot a
partition past cylinder 1024? How do I know where my partitions are in
terms of cylinders? I know that my swap space is first, then the Linux
partition and then windows, but I don't know specific cylinder numbers. 
Should I update my bios revision just in case or is this something only
older chips have? I bought this system custom built only a month ago.

Thanks in advance for the help. My doubletalk should be here in the next
couple days and then I can finally get started. My next message to the
list may be sent from pine!

-- Justin