Running Linux of 2nd HDD in MBP

Hi.
I'm gonna do some light programming in Linux, mainly python, for my bachelor-project (believe it is called graduate in US), and my MBP (mid-2009) is running OS X.

I have been planning for some time to replace my optical drive with another HDD/SSD and thought this would be the right time/opportunity.

The way I thought I would do it was to replace the optical drive with an optical bay w/HDD in and install a Linux system on it (Ubuntu). As I understand it, I will be able to boot from the optical bay HDD when booting up the Mac.

Is there any problems I should be aware of? Or perhaps some tips to best execute this "dual boot" system?

I hope you can help me.

Best

Hasse

As I understand it, I will be able to boot from the optical bay HDD when booting up the Mac.

Click to expand...

You won't be able to boot to Linux natively as you would macOS. I'm fairly certain you will need to use a boot manager that works with Linux - such as rEFInd. You can do your own research on this as setting up a dual boot varies with the model of Mac and which OS you're trying to boot to.