FreeBSD and Linux shared installation

[Polytropon]

For educational and experimental purposes, I'd like to install
FreeBSD along with two Linusi on a laptop. It has a 100 GB SATA
disk which should be sufficient. So I'm searching for important
advice and mentioning of pitfalls that I should avoid. I'm
planning to use FreeBSD 10.0, Kali Linux and Mageia. Here are
some problems or considerations I expect to be facing:

Partitioning: Does Linux support GPT, or should I better keep
using MBR? FreeBSD would get one slice, "DOS primary partition",
a common data exchange partition another one, and the Linusi
could do their stuff on "logical drives inside a DOS extended
partition", as it seems to be common over there.

Boot manager: Can the FreeBSD boot manager (which I prefer because
it's simple and sufficient) recognize and distinguish the two
Linusi? Is there an easy way to modify its source so the display
is more obvious, e. g.

	F1 FreeBSD
	F2 Kali
	F3 Mageia

	Default: F1

instead of

	F1 FreeBSD
	F2 Linux
	F3 Linux

	Default: F1

which I assume would be the default? I have already briefly checked
the source at /usr/src/sys/boot/i386/boot0/boot0ext.S which doesn't
seem to have a more specific differentiation, but maybe a "custom
hack" could be used to disguise one of the Linusi at something else?

Swap: Can the two Linusi share the same swap partition? And
furthoermore, could FreeBSD also use that one? Note that the
different systems are not running at the same time, so it would
be nonsense to waste disk space for three "dedicated" swap
partitions when one is sufficient.

Shared data partition: I'm not searching for blazing performance,
so I do not require the most recent ext10fs or RiceFat here.
The goal should be that this partition can be adressed from all
the operating systems. It doesn't have to be /home, instead it
will be mounted separately, but rw. Regarding FreeBSD, it would
nice to not require fuse here (base OS tools preferred).

My initial partitioning and sizing idea:

Partition	OS, subpart.	Size	Device (slice, partition)
--------------	--------------	------	---------------------------

Prim. #1	FreeBSD		55 GB	/dev/ada0s1{a,d,e,f,g}
		a	/	 1 GB
		d	/tmp	 2 GB
		e	/var	 2 GB
		f	/usr	15 GB
		g	/home	35 GB

Prim. #2	swap		 5 GB	/dev/ada0s2(b?), /dev/sda2

Prim. #3	common data	10 GB	/dev/adas3, /dev/sda3

Extend. #1
  log. dr. #1	Kali Linux	15 GB	/dev/sda5
  log. dr. #2	Mageia Linux	15 GB	/dev/sda6

Would something like this work, or is there a better approach?


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...