It is impossible to give instructions unless I go through the installation of every distribution wich would be pretty hard to do because there are new ones coming out all the time. The choices are usually pretty obvious anyway untill you get to the choice of the workstation, server or custom. Choose custom and for a disk partioning tool choose disk druid. You must make a root partion (/), a swap, a /home, a/usr/local, a /user/src a /usr and a /tmp.
In theory, you should be able to put it on a swap and a root but this is the only way that I've ever been able to do it.
I reccomend getting "Linux for Dummies" by Jon "maddog" Hall to help you through this and to teach you to use Linux. If you get it from a library it will be free but will probably not include the CD in the back that contains a copy of Red Hat Linux 5.2 so I would just buy the book at a store if I were you.
I have the 2nd edition of "Linux for Dummies". There is probably a newer one now.