Bootcamp

Hi all,

Just bought my first MacBook Pro recently. Getting used to the new gui after using windows for so long.

I have a question about BootCamp, I know it is advertised to be used to allow windows on a make but can I use it to install OpenSUSE?

Also how much partition space would I want to allocate for OpenSUSE?

Some folks have successfully used Boot Camp to create a partition for Linux. However, I strongly recommend you consider running OpenSUSE in a VM instead. You can purchase a copy of Parallels, Fusion, or use the free VirtualBox from Sun to run OpenSUSE in a VM.

You shouldn't need much more than around 10 GB to run OpenSUSE (depends on how many apps you install) on a single partition. Don't opt for three partitions for OpenSUSE as its not needed when running from a VM. In other words, you don't need a separate partition for Home or Swap.

Regards.

Novell recommends 3GB of HD space for openSUSE 11.1 (standard install). Add to that what you need for extra files and perhaps more importantly, room to grow with updates.

If you go the VM route (which is recommended unless you do 3D work or game under Linux), you could mount your home partition to a separate virtual HD if you're comfortable doing this. The benefit of this is that if you need to reinstall, you can just remount your home directory and you won't have to copy everything back over. This is a bit overkill for most though especially if you're just using it for testing or you have a good backup routine already in practice.