Hardware questions

[yellowdog-newbie@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com]

> My computer is a 550 Powerbook G4 laptop with a 20 gig hard drive.  I
> run Mac OS 9.2.  I would like to run old Mac programs in OS 9.2 or in OS
> X's classic mode; and run linux, gradually phasing out my use of Mac OS
 and Mac programs all together, if possible.

I would recommend that you get yourself OS X on that computer first.
You want to learn the command line? It's there. It's unix.
You can run X11 and get all the linux stuff you want,
ported to Darwin from Fink... ! Even replace OS X's gui with KDE or
gnome...

> Am I correct in stating that you cannot boot Linux
> from an external hard drive yet? Linux will not boot from external usb
> and firewire hard drives yet, right? And because of that, if you want
> to run mac and linux, you have to partition your laptop's hard drive
> for mac and linux?
> Will Mac boot from and external hard drive?

Mac will boot from an external hard drive. I know this for sure
with OS X. There is a fantastic free programme called
Carbon Copy Cloner for OS X which will copy an entire Mac partition
to an external hard drive and make it bootable.


> 2.  Partition my existing hard drive to run YDL and leave Mac OS 9.2
> alone.  Do I need a Mac boot CD for this?  I don't think one came with
> the computer.  Is there a way of making one from my computer?  I can add
> linux partitions without disturbing my mac partitions, correct?

You can create bootable OS 9 CD's pretty easily, I have done it
using Toast Titanium. Simply copy your existing system folder and
the utilities you want to have into Toast's window for creating
new data cd's, format it HFS (not HFS+).

I think that if you want to add a linux partition to
your hard drive, you will be forced to copy your existing mac stuff
to safety, and completely reformat and repartition your hard drive,
and then copy the mac stuff back. There are not (easy, safe, cheap)
tools for nondestructive repartitioning of mac hfs.

I would recommend you get yourself a live linux cdrom like
knoppix-MiB-ppc: boot a complete, working linux gui from a cdrom
without touching the contents of your hard disk. Find out if your
hardware is recognised properly and play around with the command line.
You can do partitioning from there, too..

Linux on ppc is definitely an order of magnitude harder than linux
on intel. Less people doing it, software isn't as far developped,
better alternative (ie mac os, esp. since OS X !).

good luck
richard