Hey, I am basically a newb when it comes to anything other than gaming on computers. I am working on changing that and as a first step am installing and learning a UNIX system on my mac. Here is the thing. I already partitioned the hard drive using boot camp to install windows, which I litterally never use. What I want to do is to install a Unix system over windows so I can use that instead. How do I go about doing that?

Thanks by the way for answering this. Like I said, computer newb.

go for a software like virtualbox or vmware. it's much easier and safer for your system. i have solaris 10 running on virtualbox on my mac without any problems.

good luck,
DN2

Thanks for the reply. I just looked up virtualbox. It looked like a tool to run a different operating system through the mac one. Yea? Anyways, I would really like to do something with the partitioned space besides windows. Is it risky or difficult installing a Linux operating system over it?

It's only risky if you don't know what you're doing, and accidentally have the Linux installer use the whole hard drive for the installation (I did that once, and ended up with a "FedoraBook Pro") Otherwise, it's pretty straightforward: just select the partition you want to install to, plus add a third small partition for swap space, and it should do its thing.

I used to have Fedora on my 100 GB partition, but eventually wiped it and put Windows 7 on it, and I'm now running Fedora 11 on an old Pentium 4 Dell box. I prefer dual-boot installations over VMs, as you don't get native speeds inside a VM.

Best of luck...

I don't know what I am doing. How do I not do that??

Pay careful attention to the partition you select. If the partition you're going to install to is say, 64 GB in size, the installer will probably list it as something like "sda3......65536 MB". The "sda#" labels can differ and be somewhat confusing, so just go by the partition size. If it's 100 GB, it'll show up as "102400 MB", etc. Always go for a custom partition table (so you can pick and choose what you want to install over and what you want left alone.) Assign your Linux partition as "/".

Under the hood, Mac OS X is unix. I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the Terminal application (found in Utilities) and get a feel for the command line.

I have not needed to install a different Unix OS because I find the one included with Mac OS X to be more than sufficient for me. I did however install VMWare Fusion for Windows XP and I could install other OSes if I need to.

One way to easily extend the Mac OS X unix is to install Mac Ports found at www.macports.org This utility let's you easily install a huge array of unix tools that may be missing from the stock Mac OS X toolbox.

Good luck.