How big should my Boot Partition be?

[dharma6662000]

I'm about to partition my hard-drive so I can install Mint 14.

I've found on-line that for a 6GB RAM machine, I should make an 8GB Swap Area. Does that sound about right?

When it comes to the hard-drive partition itself, Mint can run on at least 8GB. Should I make it that small?

My hard-drive is 1TB, so I have plenty of space to space. What would the advantages of a larger boot partition be?

[mintybits]

SWAP needs to be the same as RAM if you intend to use hibernation. Say for a laptop. Otherwise 4GB is usually plenty, especially if you have 6GB of RAM.

You do not normally need a boot partition at all unless you are doing something exotic like encrypting your root partition OR you are installing Grub on a GPT formatted disk. If you are not doing either of those then simply install without a separate boot partition.

[usbtux]

0mb for boot = you don't need one

[AlbertP]

You can let Mint format the drive automatically, by selecting "Use whole disk" in the installer, and then choosing the right disk.
In case there is another operating system on the disk (such as Windows), you can leave unallocated space on the disk and then choose "Install alongside Windows (or other operating system)". That will automatically create all necessary partitions in the unallocated space of your disk.

And indeed, / (the root) is the only partition that you definitely need. Swap can be good for hibernation, it needs to be just a bit larger than 6GB (the automatic formatting in the installer will do this right). Other partitions are optional. Some Linux distros (like Fedora) create a 500MB /boot by default, but you do not need that partition.