The bottom line here is that everyone has their own reasons for
different partitioning. I have not really seen any bad advice.
However, one piece of advice is to use logical partitions.
PC architecture has 4 physical partitions. If you are dual booting
with Windows, generally put Windows into Partition 1.
Then simply set up partition 2 as an extended partition for the rest of
the device. You may want to put the /boot into partition 2 so as you
can force it to be closer to the beginning of the drive., and then use
partition 3 for the extended. The extended partition can have any
number of logical partitions. Once you do this, you can subsequently
resize and add (or subtract) logical partitions. LVM is also a way to
be able to do this.
--
Jerry Feldman