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shockme17 · May 4, 2004, 05:07 PM

I'm interested in running linux on my ibook, and ive found yellowdog, but i was wondering if there were other graphical distributions? or any that dont require you to partition the drive?

Mr. Blur · May 4, 2004, 05:45 PM

..all the linux geeks (

) hang out over in the Unix Forum.

CatOne · May 4, 2004, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by shockme17:
I'm interested in running linux on my ibook, and ive found yellowdog, but i was wondering if there were other graphical distributions? or any that dont require you to partition the drive?

I don't understand... you can't install two operating systems on the SAME partition... how would that work? You definitely have to partition the drive. So if OS X takes up the whole partition you're stuck with reformatting.

I'd suggest using an external firewire HD... buy a cheap 2.5" one and install Linux on that. Easy to use and very reversible when you decide it stinks compared to OS X

wataru · May 4, 2004, 06:13 PM

I don't think YDL supports booting from an external FW drive.

YDL is pretty nice. You definitely won't find anything that doesn't require its own partition. Just bite the bullet and do it.

dhamon · May 4, 2004, 06:17 PM

I do believe slackware's got a PPC distro. But yeah, you can't avoid the partitioning.

dhamon · May 4, 2004, 06:28 PM

Eh, cancel that. I was thinking of Slackintosh, which is not exactly beginner-friendly (no desktop environment).

dhamon · May 4, 2004, 06:29 PM

Ah, but mandrake does have one.

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3#others

shockme17 · May 4, 2004, 06:48 PM

i was afraid of the partitioning thing.. i just figured id ask, so i wouldnt have to back up all my preferences and what not and reinstall everything.. and also i recall (i think) redhat making a linux for windows, which didnt require partitioning.. i was hoping there would be something similar for osx =(

so.. say if i install mandrake on an external drive, how would i go about booting to that drive? and does mandrake support that program that YDL has that allows you to run OSX? and is there any difference in performance when running OSX under linux

(sorry im a complete newbie to the linux world, and new found mac owner as of november

so bear with me. thanks ; )

Arkham_c · May 4, 2004, 10:28 PM

SuSE also had a Mac distro at one point, although I've never used it. Mandrake is quite nice on i386, so I'd definitely suggest checking it out on PPC.

wataru · May 4, 2004, 10:45 PM

Originally posted by shockme17:
so.. say if i install mandrake on an external drive, how would i go about booting to that drive? and does mandrake support that program that YDL has that allows you to run OSX? and is there any difference in performance when running OSX under linux

Mac On Linux (MOL) is a Linux program. Any Linux program should, in theory, be able to work on any distribution of Linux, so I assume it works in Mandrake, too. I don't see why you'd bother with Mandrake, though. I don't know much about it, but if you're looking for something that comes with YDL, then just use YDL. They have a lot more support information around the web than I've seen available for Mandrake PPC.

gbhgbh · May 4, 2004, 11:35 PM

Shockme17, I think this would be the best method for you without having to reinstall all of your preferences, etc. First, get Carbon Copy Cloner and backup your internal drive to an external drive. Then boot from the external drive, repartition the internal drive, and use Carbon Copy Cloner again to copy your system back to the internal drive.

If your external drive is USB, you may not be able to boot from it. In this case, after backing up the internal drive, reinstall OSX from your installation CD's. But partition the internal drive when you boot from the CD, and install this on the partition on which you'll put Linux. You want to put this on the Linux partition because it will just be temporary. Boot from the new installation, use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy your system from the external to the internal drive, reboot from your old system, and now you can erase the second partition to use for Linux.

Greg

shockme17 · May 12, 2004, 05:51 AM

thanks for the help guys. i really do appreciate.. for some reason i was really impressed with YDL, but as it doesn't support external fw booting, im going to try mandrake.. does mandrake support external booting? i just want to demo the linux platform and what not before i do anything too drastic (such as carbon copy/repartition/and whatever else- and i think ill wait until i upgrade the harddrive as well).

so my next question is. im using my ipod as the external FW drive.. will reformatting and partitioning the ipod ruin it or can i use restore to get ipod back into working status?

and do the linux distributions support airport extreme?

thanks again.

wataru · May 12, 2004, 08:07 AM

I don't think any Linux supports booting from a FireWire drive. Also, it's a very bad idea to use an iPod for anything as disk-intensive as booting a system.

I don't know about Airport Extreme. I'm sure you could find out about this via google, or YDL's website.