Newbie questions ... (yikes! :)

[Bruce Smith]

I'm the guy who was asking about the broken trackpads on powerbooks.
I ordered a new 1.5GHz/15" powerbook yesterday, so I'll see for myself!  :-)

Let me say that I'm a LONG time Linux user, but I'm completely new to
PPC hardware, Mac OSX, and Linux on anything except x86.

I downloaded PPC ISO's for YDL 4.0, Mandrake 10.1 and Ubuntu to try 
when my new powerbook arrives.  I want to dual boot OSX & Linux.
Is the best plan to immediately reinstall OSX, leaving free HDD space
for Linux?  Or is it possible to shrink the preinstalled OSX partition?

I'm aware that the airport extreme card is not supported, so what are 
my other options to get wireless working?  Are any USB wireless NIC's
supported (which ones?).  What about PCMCIA wireless NIC's?  I have
an old Orinoco silver which worked fine under x86 Linux, any chance it'll
work under PPC Linux?

Modems, same question.  USB?  PCMCIA?

Any other hardware problems I might run into?  I can live without sleep
mode, and I can live without sound if I have to.

FWIW, the reason I'm buying a new PPC laptop instead of an x86 is
because I figured I'm going to dual boot whatever laptop I buy with Linux,
and what I've heard about OSX sounds much better than what I know 
about XP....  (and I never use XP on my current x86 laptop)

Thanks!!!   Bruce.