> Why not do

> /
> swap
> /var
> /usr

> and maybe symlink /home to /usr/home?

As he said, he wants to put the accounts of "authority figures" on /home
and mere peons on /usr/home, so neither class can run the other set out
of space.  Symlinking one to the other defeats that entirely, as well as
enabling either set of users to run /usr out of space (or vice versa).

> I used to split disks into little partitions. Then one day, I asked
> myself "why" and I stopped. It makes no sense on a machine only you use.

I'm the primary user of jfwhome.funhouse.com, though my wife also uses it
a lot, and a few friends have occasional-use accounts.  I have the 6GB of
disk well chopped up, though, because I have several projects that occasionally
manage to go wild and run out of space (netnews, a netnews archive,
/usr/local/src, and a couple of other things).  Having netnews render the
whole machine unusable in the middle of the night isn't desirable.  Having
a compile of something like SPICE screw up netnews (and indirectly screw up
my archive project) isn't desirable.  Partitions can be useful, even on
a "single" user machine.  I have 10 disk filesystem entries in my current
mount table, which doesn't count the unmounted MSDOS partition and my backup
root (plus the two swap partitions).  I'd be hosed if I had a single spindle
instead of four.  In fact, I'd be hosed with two spindles, since the i386 port
only gives six usable partitions per disk.  (It's a good thing 2G drives are
the current sweet spot in disk pricing. ;-) )