Question about /boot partition. (Debian)

From: Michael Vondung (mvondung_at_gmx.net)
Date: 05/31/04 

Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 08:37:04 +0200

I've been fiddling around with Linux (various distros) on another
machine, and have been running FreeBSD on a server for quite some time.
My workstation dual-boots FreeBSD and Windows XP. While I quite like
FreeBSD, the downtime caused by compiling applications from source is a
bit cumbersome on this kind of machine. I'd also like to obtain a bit
more experience with Linux.

The distro I'll be using is Debian. Since it's just a desktop, I'll give
Linux its own 80GB disk and don't plan on partitioning in any kind of
smart manner (I also don't really know enough about space requirements
yet), so I'll go with just a / partition. The one thing that I'm
confused about is the /boot partition. I googled a bit and checked out
various tutorials, but the advice regarding a small /boot partition is
very contradictive -- ranging from 50MB to 500MB, or none at all. In
more recent posts/articles, it seems more commonly recommended to
completely skip it, unless it's a server or otherwise critical machine.

So, is a small /boot partition recommended for a desktop machine? And if
so, what size is sufficient with enough potential for future versions?
Or is it just waste of space and it should just be put under /, too?

Thanks!

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