I would use cfdisk or QTparted to partition the HD. It does I think need an 'active' partition but 'primary' and extended are windows terms not needed for Linux.
For a multi boot system I would put one partition about 4 Gig from each linux O/S I wanted to install, one swap about 300-500 Meg and the rest of the drive for data. Alway skeep data separate from operating system for in case of a system crash. If I was going to use windows at all, I would format the data partition vfat so win & linux could both use the same data partition.
I would put lilo on the MBR from the first O/S installed, all the others would put their lilo (or grub if preferred) on the partition. These systems would then be added into the main lilo as 'other' operating system which will boot into the bootloader on the partition.
If I was going to have a dual boot winows/linux system I would use windows fdisk to do the initial partition at least as far as creating a primary & extended partition. Windows is fussier than linux about partitiions. Linux could then be used to create logical partitions in the extended partition.