I'm a Linux newbie, but interested in trying it out alongside OS X.
I'll be buying an iBook, and I figure that it's better to do the
partitioning at the start.
True.
1. Changing flavors. If I install one distro (say, YDL) and then
wanted to switch to another (Debian, Ubuntu), could I re-use the
existing Linux partitions or would I have to completely reformat?
You won't have to re-partition, but it is probably a good idea to
reformat the partition you will install Linux on. You should be able to
format only the Linux partition in most distro installers, saving your
OS X partition.
2. Partition sizes. I see that YDL 4.0 recommends 1MB for boot, 512MB
for swap (or equal to RAM), and 2+ GB for a personal desktop install.
The 1 MB is not for /boot, it is for the bootstrap code. On a Mac, the
system has to start a Mac OS-like bootstrap before it swings to Linux.
I recommend a /boot partition of about 50 MB to 100 MB for the kernel
and ram disk images in addition to the bootstrap partition.
2 GB may be a bit tight for a GUI desktop install of a modern Linux
distro. I have a new FC4 install that takes up almost 4 GB with a full
development environment including Java tools. I'm not saying you can't
wisely choose a set of packages to install that will fit in 2 GB.
Depending on what you are trying to do with your Linux install, 2 GB
may not have enough headroom.
Should I use a bigger install partition to accomodate stored files and
possible distro changes (from #1)? What would be a safe size to cover
all distros?
It really depends on what you want to do with the system. A
server-only, no GUI install is generally under 1 GB. Most of the recent
desktop installs I've done are over 2 GB. I would recommend 3 GB or 4
GB.
3. File systems. I think I've read that the Linux and Mac OSs can't
read each other's file systems. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that.)
There is software for Linux that will allow you to read HFS volumes
from Linux, but I don't recommend writing to HFS volumes from Linux.
Maybe someone with more recent experience can weigh in. My experiences
writing to HFS from Linux were a disaster.
So if I have documents that I'd want to access from either OS, should
I create an extra partition in a "neutral" file system like FAT32?
FAT32 is what I use when I have to. I generally have a server I can use
as a way to move files between Linux and OS X. A USB flash drive might
be an inexpensive solution so you don't have to dedicate some hard
drive space just to transferring files. Be aware that some flash drives
are goofy in how they implement USB, and can cause problems under
Linux. Newer kernels ( and udev ) generally have workarounds built in
for the bad ones.
I'm guessing one downside would be that the Mac disk utilities
wouldn't be able to fix that partition. Are there other things to
consider about that, or other solutions?
No answer, I usually have Linux on a separate machine from OS X.
I personally have switched from YDL to Fedora Core. YDL uses Fedora
Core as a base, but releases older software than FC. YDL 4 is basically
a mix of FC2 and FC3. FC4 is out, and FC5 is scheduled for February
2006. I have seen no public schedules for the next version of YDL.
Security updates are available sooner for Fedora Core than YDL. You
generally need to completely re-install to move to a newer version of
YDL, while a disc-based upgrade path is available on Fedora Core.
As usual, YMMV.
Charles Dostale
System Admin - Silver Oaks Communications
http://www.silveroaks.com/
824 17th Street, Moline IL 61265
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