question about running ubuntu on my macbook

[stealthsniper96]

when i get my HD upgraded in my MB im planning on getting an external enclosure for my current 80gb drive and installing ubuntu on that so i can just plug that in whenever i feel like doing some linux. but i have a few questions- 1- will the macbook automatically recognize the drive after a restart or will i have to do something else to boot off the external?
2- will i have to run bootcamp on the mac hd to get this to work or no because the other OS is on another disk?
3- when i repartition the 80gb disk what should i format it to?

 

[russell.h]

2. Get rEFIt or bootcamp, just something to provide "BIOS emulation" or whatever it is that they provide. rEFIt happens to look much nicer than the bootcamp menu, plus it always pops up so it may be a better choice if you will be switching operating systems a lot. But really it makes little difference.

1. On that note, I wasn't able to make my MBP boot Ubuntu off a USB drive, although I think there may be a way to make it do so. Check out www.ubuntuforums.org, there is a section specifically for Intel Macs.

3. If you are going to wipe the drive then it doesn't matter, Ubuntu's installer will run GParted (I think its GParted) and let you format/partition however you want. However I think it can't resize a Journaled HFS+ partition (or maybe it can resize but not create?). If you want to keep any HFS+ partitions you should disable journaling in OS X. Ubuntu will use ext3 for its file system by default (not even sure if you can change it easily), which is a perfectly good choice.

 

[Modjo]

Make sure to get a FireWire enclosure for the HD with a chipset that is guaranteed to work as a bootable drive.
Booting Ubuntu from external USB HD's is tricky and FiWi doesnt create as much overhead as USB, so no bandwidth problems to deal with.

 

[russell.h]

On a vaguely related note, does anyone know if its possible to boot from an eSata drive using one of those Express Card > eSata adapters? (With a SR MBP that is).

A 7200rpm eSata drive should be even faster than an internal 5400rpm drive, and it would be pretty sweet to install Windows on there for games without having to clutter up my internal drive.