I have a longterm goal of running Debian 7 (Gnome 3), openSuse 12.3 (KDE), a system running XFCE desktop, Back Track, Gentoo, and a Linux from Scratch Project on a hard drive (I selected these for learning purposes). I also plan on eventually compiling a kernel.
I've got 1.5 TB. I believe we are allowed 4 partitions but the Extended portion can be used for the "extra" distro's (?)
What would be the best way to organize the hard drive?

A common swap for all, followed by two principal partitions(for one OS each), then a extended partition containing the others OS partitions and home partitions.

I have 10 GB RAM so maybe a 12 GB SWAP?

What Partition tool do you think I should use to set this up? (I have Parted Magic but I could make a GPARTED disk)

I have 1.5 TB ... would the following plan be good? :
Primary: 350 GB Debian 7
Primary: 250 GB openSUSE
Extended: about 700 GB (100 GB=Lightweight Distro running XFCE, 100GB=Back Track, 100GB=GENTOO, ?=Linux From Scratch)
SWAP 12 GB

current situation:

Unless you expect some serious runaway processes or major data sets in memory, swap of eg 4GB should be plenty and probably largely unused.

Conventionally, you can have up to 4 primary partitions.
If you want more, most people have primaries, then an extended partition that contains all the rest (logical) partitions.
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/

EDIT 'most people have 3 primaries'

I though that if you want to Hibernate then the swap should be slightly larger than the RAM?

I didn't know that you already had partitions, so keep the swap as it is by know. Or have you planed to delete them?
I don't know
These sizes are a lot too large for system partition. Keep your space for data partitions.

That's true; it didn't sound like a system that would be hibernated.

Almost every installer can make partitions. Even if you have a live cd you can usually add gparted to the live boot if needed. Fdisk is still useful.

I think you could easily consider a virtual machine or 6 and not play with all that partition deal. I'd stick with one main OS and then run everything else as virtual.

There is some formula for how much ram if you want to hibernate. I also would have not thought you would use hibernate.

@jefro I am still a newbie so lacking experience I am trying to keep my options open. Debian 7 turned out to be easier to install for me than openSUSE or MINT (go figure). Debian is all on a 350 G primary partition. I left about 200 GB unused right after it and I decided, for educational purposes, to build Gentoo on there (my current project, using a Gentoo minimal install). The rest is about 1 TB of Extended (my swap is at the end of that), an LFS project should be able to go on there, I think. Anybody is welcome to comment on whether this is the best path to learning about Linux. No doubt I will have to study GRUB to get Gentoo to boot properly. There is some pressure to do this right on a real partition. I REALLY APPRECIATE THE HELP AND EDUCATION I AM GETTING FROM LINUXQUESTIONS.ORG! I hope to someday have the knowledge to give back to the Linux community.

It is my opinion that playing with a lot of different installs on a single system gets more confusing than it would be for a simple one or two OS install. That is why I suggested the virtual machine. It allows you to more easily install many OS's and not get bogged down with chainloading, lilo, grub and such.

In almost every use, a virtual machine client running on a host is just as if you had two computers. Every task you have to do on the vm client is exactly what you'd have to do for a real install.

But, there is no way to say one way to learn is better. Enjoy is best path.


Gentoo and LFS will be a path of nuts and bolts. They are very hands on, details about the steps need to be known or understood to some extent. They are both great ways to learn but it would be self taught for the most part. Fortunately the documentation is easy to get and when read a few times makes sense.

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