Originally posted by bens1901:
I am interested in having an iBook with OSX, OS9, and a Linux OS too. Is this possible?
Yes.
Can the machine be configured to prompt the User for what OS to start?
Yes. You'll use Yaboot ("Yet Another Bootloader") to start Linux, and you can set it up to show a OS selection screen. Depending on what distro you use, the installer may set this up automatically.
Would it be possible to install Linux on an external hard drive and tell the Mac OS to use that hard drive as the boot drive?
I kind of remember something about Linux not being able to boot from a USB or FireWire drive... But if it can, I think you'd have to get into Open Firmware (a cryptic command line in the system's ROM, sort of like the BIOS) to set the boot drive to a Linux drive. The startup disk control panel/preference pane can't see Linux systems. Yaboot could handle this, though.
Would this be possible if the external drive is a usb drive that when connected would be Linux, and when the drive is not connected then the machine would do the normal Mac OS boot?
I don't know of any way to do this, but there may be one. You can try setting open firmware to always boot from the external disk, it may resort to your internal drive when it's not there. Someone else might know for sure.
I've dealt with Linux on PCs (sorry for writing those 2 letters on a mac forum...I really am a Mac fan more than any other os). I'm not too familiar with how Linux would run on a Mac, so this question may be a begginer one.
Thanks for any info.
-Ben
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