changing & formatting partitions

I prefer using cfdisk over fdisk because it is menu driven. Usually creating a partition table will involve a hda1 primary boot partition followed by a extended partition hda5 (linux), hda 6 (swap) and so on.

format boot via
mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n NAME -v /dev/hda1

format linux via
mke2fs -j -L KNOPPIX /dev/hda5

turn off filesystem checking via
tune2fs -c 0 /dev/hda5

set up swap via
mkswap /dev/hda6

changing a label of partition after you put your data on it
tune2fs -L NEWLABEL /dev/hda5