I have just put together a quick overview of the general partitioning information you will need when installing linux on your PC/server. Hope it helps if your just beginning :)
/ the root partition/volume is identified by a forward slash(/). All other directories are attached to this parent directory. It is somewhat equivalent to the system drive(C:\) in Windows.
/boot This contains almost everything required for the boot process. It stores data that is used before the kernel begins executing other programs. I usually set my boot partition to about 100MB in size.
/usr This is usually where all program files reside, somewhat like C:\Program Files on Windows.
/home This is where, by default all user home directories are stored. Somewhat equivalent to C:\Documents and Settings on Windows.
/var Logs are generally stored here so it’s a good idea to have a separate partition for /var so that log files don’t and can’t fill up all the space on your system.
/tmp This is where temporary files go, and its writable by any user – keep this on a separate partition to avoid malicious users filling it up with data, and make the partition NOEXEC if possible.
SWAP This is pretty much the same as the virtual memory feature on Windows. For a System with 1-4GB of RAM I usually allocate 2GB SWAP, whilst 4GB+ I usually allocate 4GB SWAP.
Hope this helps with any confusion you may have, and by the way – if your not sure what file system to use I usually recommend ext3. It’s a lot easier to troubleshoot and work with than Logical Volumes.