I want more than 4 partitions...
 

Alright. I've got a large hard drive and I have 3 flavors of Linux that I like to switch between. Well, that's a lie. I have two that I like to switch between and want to try a third. SuSE 10.1, Mandriva 2007 and Kubuntu. I've got a WD 250gb SATA drive that I want to put them on. I figured HEY! They each require two partitions and a swap, right? So I'll just divy it up into 7 partitions. The clouds parted, the light shone through and I was slapped in the face, called stupid, and didn't even get a name. Turns out, I can only have 4 partitions. 4 < 7 and I want a Linux threesome ASAP

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Please Help

You don't really need separate swap partitions for each distro, you can use just one. As for disk partitioning, make sure you make a max of 3 primary partitions and a large extended partition. You can install 2 or 3 distros on the primary partitions and then create many logical partitions on the extended partition and use that to install more distros if you wish.

Nope - you can only have 4 primary partitions.
You need to start using logical partitions.

Plenty of discussions both here and elsewhere on the web - tldp.org has a partitioning howto.

Can I divide that Extended partition up into 3 logical partitions? If I set the root directory of each distro to each of the 3 primaries, and set the /usr, /var, etc to the 3 of the 4 logical partitions, and the swap as the 4th logical partition, will that work?

Yeah, I found a dozen or so articles explaining what they are, but I can't find anything explaining what it means as far as multibooting is concerned. I don't know if it's ok to put a root on a logical partition or if there's anything I need to watch out for. I can't seem to figure out exactly how to actually partition them. I've got an idea how I want them now though, so lemme see if this works

For simplicity sake all your Linux partitions should be logicals - there is no requirement for primary, although some (distro) installers seem to barf.
Poor installer design, not an inherent Linux limitation.

Set up as many as you need.
Create an extended partition (as a "container"), then suballocate logicals.
Go look at www.tldp.org as I said.

Note that it's worthwhile remembering that Windoze requires a primary to install into. Also must boot from this.

Yeah, I have two identical drives. I have a windows partition on the other along with a general backup drive. It seems to have accepted that layout. Gonna see if the installers agree. Thanks for the help :D