The biggest issue which I've found with SSD is the huge cost for a much smaller drive than what you can get with a comparable price range in an IDE/PATA/SATA HDD. The other (and even bigger issue for me) is that the SSD HDDs don't support all of the various RAID levels ( like the one I use, RAID 0+1 ) Another issue is that if you're BIOS doesn't support SSD, such as with an older system, that too can cause problems for you. I've not had a ton of experience with the SSD HDDs, but I know that Linux has much better support for the older, more established formats (IDE/PATA/SATA) than it does for SSD. Over time, of course, this will improve and SSD HDD support will be better a year or two down the road from where it is now. I tend to go for stability, so I run 32-bit versions of Linux vs. 64-bit versions because the support for 32-bit is better now than it is for 64-bit. Again, this too will improve over time. I prefer stability, so Ubuntu LTS over Ubuntu NON-LTS for me on desktops, Debian or CentOS on servers, 32-bit over 64-bit, and IDE/PATA/SATA over SSD when it comes to HDDs. ALL of the above of course is my own personal opinion and experiences. I tend to be an idealist who prefers stability and shoots for "Best Practices" over what "just works, even if it isn't ideal or Best Practices". Keep in mind that Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, all are based in Debian. Ubuntu LTS pulls initially pulls it's code from debian-testing and the NON-LTS versions of Ubuntu pull from debian-unstable (whereas Debain itself goes debian-unstable > debian-testing > debian-stable <-- which is where Debian releases come from) --- So as such, Ubuntu and it's forks aren't going to be as stable as just plain old Debian is. Then again, maybe people LIKE and WANT bleeding edge, and that's cool if they do, but then just run Gentoo, Slackware, Linux From Scratch and compile it yourself, or atleast run Arch (but know that Arch uses unsigned packages - which I would never trust or use on a production system... only a system for testing / developing on.)on.) Lastly, file systems..... ext3 is the way to go. It's old, stable, and Journals. As for partitioning, if this is just a home system for desktop use, just toss everything on one drive and one / partition. You MAY want to pu8t /home on it's own hard drive if you distro hope because that way you can just unmount it, install, remount it and continue on with it as is. If this is for a server setup, SSDD HDDs haven't proved themselves enough to me yet to use them in that capacity, but to answer your question on partitions...it depends on what kind of server it is. Some write to the hard drive(s) more than others do. I also recommend a centralized /var/log server where all other servers point to it instead of the local /var/log directory path on each local system.

The biggest issue which I've found with SSD is the huge cost for a much smaller drive than what you can get with a comparable price range in an IDE/PATA/SATA HDD. The other (and even bigger issue for me) is that the SSD HDDs don't support all of the various RAID levels ( like the one I use, RAID 0+1 ) Another issue is that if you're BIOS doesn't support SSD, such as with an older system, that too can cause problems for you. I've not had a ton of experience with the SSD HDDs, but I know that Linux has much better support for the older, more established formats (IDE/PATA/SATA) than it does for SSD. Over time, of course, this will improve and SSD HDD support will be better a year or two down the road from where it is now. I tend to go for stability, so I run 32-bit versions of Linux vs. 64-bit versions because the support for 32-bit is better now than it is for 64-bit. Again, this too will improve over time. I prefer stability, so Ubuntu LTS over Ubuntu NON-LTS for me on desktops, Debian or CentOS on servers, 32-bit over 64-bit, and IDE/PATA/SATA over SSD when it comes to HDDs. ALL of the above of course is my own personal opinion and experiences. I tend to be an idealist who prefers stability and shoots for "Best Practices" over what "just works, even if it isn't ideal or Best Practices". Keep in mind that Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, all are based in Debian. Ubuntu LTS pulls initially pulls it's code from debian-testing and the NON-LTS versions of Ubuntu pull from debian-unstable (whereas Debain itself goes debian-unstable > debian-testing > debian-stable <-- which is where Debian releases come from) --- So as such, Ubuntu and it's forks aren't going to be as stable as just plain old Debian is. Then again, maybe people LIKE and WANT bleeding edge, and that's cool if they do, but then just run Gentoo, Slackware, Linux From Scratch and compile it yourself, or atleast run Arch (but know that Arch uses unsigned packages - which I would never trust or use on a production system... only a system for testing / developing on.)