Installing Linux on a MAC with 2 hardrives

[Kyle Jones]

Hi,

I have a MAC Mini running 10.8.5, 2.6 Ghz i7 with 10GB RAM.

I currently have a 128GB SSD hardrive which is where the mac boots from and a 1TB other harddrive as storage.

I want to also install Ubuntu so that I can use this as my primary use, for developing. Is it possible to split the 128SSD So that both linux and mac boot from this (to optimize performance), and then split the 1tb drive in half so both use these aswell?

Is this the best way top do this?

Or is it better to use all the SSD for ubuntu and have the 1tb for the mac? (as ill be using this for mostly ubuntu stuff)

Anyone with any experience with this any opinions would be appreciated

[Liutauras Vilda]

Hi,

Let me have a look at this from different point of view.
If your intense is to use something different from Windows, but UNIX based, Mac OS X in my opinion is not a bad choice.
Mac OS X since 10.5 version became UNIX certified, so you could consider that OS as a system similar to Linux, actually more like BSD family OS.

Nevertheless, if you really like to install Ubuntu on your machine, first of all I'd recommend for you to try to do so on virtual box as Oracle VM VirtualBox.
You could download it from here (<- link). It is a free product. So you could see if all your hardware is supported first.
I haven't tried to install Linux on my Mac, but I do have FreeBSD installed on Oracle's VirtualBox and it works as expected and all supported, I believe so shouldn't be a problems with Ubuntu also, but it is worth to try first, before you start installing it directly as a main system.

For the exact steps how to achieve what you want, might someone else will know precise, so could help you more.

Anyone else tried to install Ubuntu instead of Mac OS X as a main system on Apple Mac mini?