My understanding of disc partitioning has always been that you partition a disc to install multiple operating systems so you can boot from multiple operating systems on a single disc. However I'm reading a ubuntu server book and it talks about partitioning the /home directory of a ubuntu installation.
"The /home directory is a popular partitioning candidate among both administrators and desktop users alike because it holds all of the personal files for user accounts on that machine. If you maintain /home as a separate partition, you can install new versions of a distribution or even different distributions altogether without wiping out any user settings."
I don't see how and why anyone would partition the home directory or any other directory for that matter in the file system of a ubuntu installation.