After reading the replies, and the FHS several times, I've decided to use the following partitioning scheme.
Currently 6G hda 2G for WindowsNT, 100M for /, 64M Swap, 1G for /home, and the rest, almost 2G for /usr. Proposed. 6G hda 2G for WindowsNT, 100M for /, 64M Swap, rest for /home. 13G hdb 4G for /usr, 4G for /opt, 4G for /var, and two 650 M partitions for CD images. I realise the hdb doesn't quite add up, but this is just an approximation. This should give me plenty of room for various app's that I want to install. The most important one being StarOffice. Once I get that installed, I can get the family used to Linux instead of Windows and hopefully I can wipe the Windows partition off completely by the end of the year. If any one thinks I should divide the space differently, I'd like to hear the reasoning. This is based mainly on the FHS and seems to make sense to me, but I'm still learning about Linux. Thanks to everyone who had input, and offered their ideas of partitioning schemes. Cheers, John Gay