I would not go with swap at 3x RAM. More likely 2x.Depending on how old
the system is, the usual recommendationis to do 2x the ram- up to a max setting
of 4 gigabytes at the most.Some of my older Linux buddies say you don't need
even 2x the RAM,but I usually do somewhere near it on any install that I do.
What partitions do you need? Depends on taste really.The preferred popular
partitions you have already named.Sizes.. again, it's preference. I usually
create a root partition ofanywhere between 8 to 12 gigabytes. This again
depends on howmany files/apps you want to store in partitions other than /home
For /home - I would give it as much drive space as you can.One approach can be
to do the partitioning in this order.1) set the swap space - (again, 2x the RAM
or a little less, should be ok).2) set /giving it maybe 10 gig or so.3) give the
remaining drive space to a partition for /home
Some, by the way, create a /boot partition - if you want to do this (kernels and
grub get installed there) you can, but it really isn't necessary. If you do
this,you can set the size small (500 meg at max should be fine)
Some people also create /optbut again, for a basic Linux system this isn't
really mandatory.
The list goes on. But I'd stick with the basic 3 you already mentioned (/,
/home, and swap).