I am a newbee wanting to make the transition from OSX to Linux. I will need to boot from either OS for a while until I feel secure. Plus I have expensive proprietary software I still need to use on OSX. I have a G4 dual 450 running on OS 10.28 with the update of firmare from apple. I am running OSx on one HD 80 gigs and I have another (the one that came with the machine) apple HD 30 gigs partitioned into three parts one for running os 9.2 and the other partitions are scratch discs. I would like to re partition and run the linux instead of one of the scratch partitions. I am a little nervous about flashing the firmware and having a problem. Basically I am afraid of rendering my tower into an extremely large paper weight and not being able to even use OSX. Is there a way to bakcup the firmware before it is flashed so if I need to revert to the old firmware, I may? Or is there a firmware flash available for the G4 to reflash, if I need to revert? Maybe there is another way around this? Also what distribution would be the best? Yellowdog, Debian, or some other? I am leaning toward Debian, but I am not making a truely informed decision. tat folks. -jot411