[Ham-Mac] Mac Linux

[Jim Tittsler]

On May 8, 2005, at 06:03, Larry Weil wrote:

> I'm wondering how much experience any of you have with Mac Linux?   
> The first question I have is how large a partition should I make  
> for this?  The, once I install this, do I boot from that partition,  
> or does Mac Linux run as an application the way Virtual PC does?

I'm not familiar with a product or distribution called "Mac Linux."   
I suspect you have one of the several Linux distributions for the  
Mac.  Before doing an "installation," you might want to try one of  
the Live CD versions of Linux.  These run directly from CD and allow  
you to (a) verify that the distribution properly detects all of your  
hardware and (b) allow you to explore the Linux environment without  
any installation or the requirement to write anything to hard disk.   
(The disadvantage is that they boot and start programs more slowly,  
since everything is coming from the CD.)  Ubuntu Linux has an easy-to- 
use LiveCD for the PPC for example.  <http://www.ubuntulinux.org/>   
Once you get some experience with Linux and decide which applications  
you will be using (and how much space their data will require), you  
can make a better estimate of the space requirements.  (5 GB would be  
enough for a Linux learning sandbox, but something with a lot of  
large data files would obviously require more.)  Linux boots as a  
separate operating system.  There is a mac-on-linux project that  
allows you to run (older(?) versions of) Mac OS X while running  
Linux.  <http://www.maconlinux.org/>

> Also, does anyone have any opinions on the Linux version of  
> Echolink as compared to EchoMac?

EchoMac runs echolinux in the background, and adds an easy-to-use and  
pretty GUI to it.  There is a very bare bones GUI in the echolinux  
distribution, but there is also a Perl/Tk project that adds a bigger  
front end.  <http://www.adsb.co.uk/software/echolinux/>

> I really don't know much, I just want to experiment a bit and do it  
> in a way that won't affect my basic operating system (OS X v 10.4,  
> a.k.a. Tiger).  I just picked up the disk this morning at a  
> hamfest, it came with no instructions, they just burned a disk for  
> me right there.

A Live CD sounds like an excellent starting point if you just want to  
explore... no installation/writing to hard disk necessary.

-- 
Jim Tittsler  7J1AJH/AI8A  Tokyo                     GPG: 0x01159DB6
http://www.qsl.net/7j1ajh/                       QRP/Satellites/APRS
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