March 23, 2001, 1:41 PM —
In the first part of this series, you learned what Linux distributions are available for your Mac. Now you will see how to install one of them on your Power Macintosh. Although we describe installing the LinuxPPC 2000 distribution below, most procedures also apply to the other Linux-on-Mac distributions like Yellow Dog or SuSE for PPC (see Resources for links). The installation can be divided into three steps: backing up your existing Mac OS, planning and partitioning your hard drive, and installing Linux itself and configuring the boot loader. If you've ever installed Linux on a PC, you are familiar with the whole process. In general, the easiest part is installing Linux itself and the hardest part is configuring the boot loader and repartitioning the hard drive. In any case, you should first back up important files from Mac OS and be prepared to lose your current Mac OS installation.
If you just want to give Linux a try without risking data loss, you can use LinuxPPC Lite. It resembles many small distributions for the PC that can be installed inside an existing OS without repartitioning the drive. LinuxPPC Lite can boot from a zip disk, removable SCSI disk, or any other bootable drive. No risk, no fears, no extensive documentation reading -- just fun with Linux.
Partitioning the drive
Before you start the LinuxPPC installation, you need to partition your hard drive. If you don't care about losing Mac OS, you can skip this section. However, most people want to hold on to Mac OS for office applications and games. The most comfortable approach for them is to use a secondary ATA hard drive only for Linux. This method frees them from disk-partitioning hassles. But if you have only one hard drive and want to run both Mac OS and Linux on it, you need to partition your disk.
