Any Risks to OS X, if Booting Another OS?

I've now got 2 functioning external bootable drives. A clone of my installed OS X is on one for backup purposes, and I'm considering installing Ubuntu Linux on the other (the live CD seemed to run fine). My question is:

If I were to boot to the Ubuntu OS, is there any danger that files accessed by that OS would be altered (permissions, etc) in such a way as to render them useless or damaged when I boot back into OS X? For that matter, I've seen/read where some users will have Panther installed/bootable on an external drive, and Tiger on their primary/internal drive. Same question there. Can one screw up the other? Is there any significant risk?

Thanks!

Mark

No, the only way something in OSX would be altered (or even used) is if you did it through Ubuntu's Terminal. They will keep to themselves. I've used Ubuntu on my Powerbook G4.

surfwax95 said:

No, the only way something in OSX would be altered (or even used) is if you did it through Ubuntu's Terminal. They will keep to themselves. I've used Ubuntu on my Powerbook G4.

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Thanks very much. Ubuntu seems, for me, to be the most hardware compatible distro currently out there, so I may give it a go.

Mark

Have you tried YellowDog?

surfwax95 said:

Have you tried YellowDog?

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No, that's one I haven't tried yet. I've got a stack of "live" CD's and installs for what I thought was darn near every distro, but I'll give it a look. Thanks!

Mark

Out of curiosity as a new Mac user (only 2 months), what benefits would one get by installing Linux? Is it compatible with Windows software? Is it just for fun? What?

xbrian87 said:

Out of curiosity as a new Mac user (only 2 months), what benefits would one get by installing Linux? Is it compatible with Windows software? Is it just for fun? What?

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In my case, yes, having an alternate OS to toy with is exactly for that purpose: just fun. Getting it installed, tweaking it, etc, just for the sake of it. As for compatibility, it's kind of the same deal as with Mac's OS. Samba for network sharing, CUPS printing, Open Office, etc.

Mark

geekboy2000 said:

No, that's one I haven't tried yet. I've got a stack of "live" CD's and installs for what I thought was darn near every distro, but I'll give it a look. Thanks!

Mark

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It appears (unless I didn't look closely enough) that there's no live CD for trial purposes, nor is YellowDog a free distro. I don't have a problem with shelling out a few bucks, but I'd like to run a live CD first to get a feel for what lies ahead.

Mark

Ubuntu is a very good distro and the one for the PPC Macs works great. I have booted the Live CD on at least 10 Macs and it always found all the hardware perfectally and worked great. I never messed anything from OSX up in any way.

dtravis7 said:

Ubuntu is a very good distro and the one for the PPC Macs works great. I have booted the Live CD on at least 10 Macs and it always found all the hardware perfectally and worked great. I never messed anything from OSX up in any way.

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Thanks! Yes, I was pleasantly surprised by how nicely it worked "out of the box" (from the live CD) on the mini, as compared to the endless struggles I faced with it (and other Linux distros) on "intended for Windows" desktops and laptops. I'm just debating now, whether it's worth having two external drives with bootable partitions with OS X copies on them (extra nice security blanket), or whether I should do an install of Ubuntu onto one of them. Gotta love that no-hassle external drive boot feature of the Mac.

Mark

dtravis7 said:

Ubuntu is a very good distro and the one for the PPC Macs works great. I have booted the Live CD on at least 10 Macs and it always found all the hardware perfectally and worked great. I never messed anything from OSX up in any way.

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Do you know whether or not the installation itself installs a boot loader (grub, I suppose) on any drive other than the one specified for install? In other words, I'd want to choose the boot drive using the Mac OPTION key, and not have it alter the normal boot process in any way from my primary drive.

Mark

I discovered that apparently without prompting, Ubuntu does install a boot loader, and makes Ubuntu the default OS (from what I've read). I understand it's not that difficult to change, but I'd really prefer to just choose the boot drive (if you invoke the OPTION key), and have it not touch the default drive/OS. That's about the only thing keeping me from installing it at this point.

Mark

I've used Ubuntu live before, and I LOVED it! it was super productive...

quick sidenote why linux is better- productive, faster, easier to toy around with, and yes you can run windows apps using wine (which actually works with running .exe files on the computer)

But yeah go for Ubuntu. It's a great distro, I've used it. It made my '98 Dell XPS Dimensions desktop with 20 GB hd and 256 gigs of ram almost faster than my HP laptop with 80 gb hd 512 ram from 2004.

BlindingLights said:

I've used Ubuntu live before, and I LOVED it! it was super productive...

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I have also used it for a short time on a Toshiba laptop, and IMO, it's a great distro to be sure. That along with Automatix (which I haven't tried yet), seems like a great combination.

BlindingLights said:

quick sidenote why linux is better- productive, faster, easier to toy around with, and yes you can run windows apps using wine (which actually works with running .exe files on the computer)

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It's amazing that WINE has been in development for as long as it has been. I haven't given it a workout since a Red Hat install a few years ago.

BlindingLights said:

But yeah go for Ubuntu. It's a great distro, I've used it. It made my '98 Dell XPS Dimensions desktop with 20 GB hd and 256 gigs of ram almost faster than my HP laptop with 80 gb hd 512 ram from 2004.

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I'm on the fence, and almost over the top. Again though, I'd just like to avoid the boot loader. It just makes me nervous.

Thanks for the comments!

Mark

I've heard it reported that if the boot loader installs, you can boot back into OS X, and set the startup drive back to the Macintosh HD from there, and after doing so, the default boot will once again be OS X, unless you hold down OPTION, and select the other/Ubuntu drive. I'm getting close . . I may try that!

Mark

Well, it turns out, after attempting to install Ubuntu to a partition on one of my external firewire drives, that the install failed at the yaboot installation. And, it seems, this is pretty common. I believe Ubuntu or Yaboot, does not recognize firewire drives. Or, so it seems.

Mark