Stuff you need:

• A Mac with a hard drive you don't mind wiping and re-partitioning
• OS 9.2 and OS X
• A copy of YellowDog 2.1 (download and burn the ISO, or, buy it)
• Three to four hours to waste doing this.

The Steps:

1. Prepare to toast your hard drive!! If you've got stuff you want to save, move it to another storage device now (like a CD-R or a Zip Disk).
2. Download and burn the YellowDog 2.1 ISO. Or, buy a copy. To try it out, either borrow or burn a copy. But, I love this product so I'm going to tell you to support these guys and buy it.
3. Insert your OS 9 disk. Reboot and hold down the C key to boot from the CD.
4. Once you're up and running here. Open up the Utilities folder and choose Drive Setup.
5. On the Drive Setup window, there's a button called "Initialize". Click it, and then click "Custom Setup".
6. Here, you want to create three or four partitions. I created 4, One for OS 9, one for OS X, one for the stuff I wanted to share between the two, and one for Linux (that we're going to further slice). If you have the room, give OS X and Linux the lion's share of the space, a smaller partition for OS 9, and whatever's leftover for your shared drive (or leave it out altogether). Here's how mine would look on a 20 gig drive (do the sizes however you want, based on what OS you'll use most often, keeping this order. Be sure to give your Linux partition at least 2.5 gb, preferrably 3, if you want to use XWindows):
   1. OS 9 - MacOS Extended - 1 gb
   2. OS 10 - MacOS Extended - 8 gb
   3. Shared - MacOS Extended - 3 gb
   4. Linux - MacOS Extended - 8 gb
7. Once you're happy with the layout run that initialization.
8. Once you're done initializing the drive, you'll probably want to change the names, just to keep them straight. Close Drive Setup (Apple Key + Q). You should now see your four drives on the desktop. Name them however you want (check the sizes though - OS 9 sometimes screws up the order).
9. Install OS 9 (you have to have done this before. If you haven't - follow the happy Apple directions)
10. Reboot and do your little OS 9 setup routine (I have it down to a science now I've reinstalled so many times). Make sure you run Software Update to get 9.2.2 (dot whatever's newest and happiest)
11. Now, insert that OS X installer, and install it. It's pretty straightforward. One warning: do NOT format your OS X drive with the Unix File System. I've found it breaks the Linux bootloader, and that's not good.
12. Once you've installed OS X and it's set up the way you want, insert your YellowDog install CD and reboot, holding down the C key (yeah, I told you again, just cuz I'm a nice guy).
13. You should get a black screen with some white text. Just hit enter. That should run the installer.
14. Agree to the stuff it wants you to agree to (the first two screens, I think). When it asks if you want to run a Default or Custom installation, run Default. There are enough options there that you should be able to accomplish any custom setup you want.
15. Now, you should be at the hard drive partitioning step. Click the Edit button.
16. The last hfs partition (for me, it was /dev/hda12) is the Linux partition you created. Highlight it, and then click Delete.
17. Now, we need to create three new partitions:
    1. Click Add. For size, type in 10 mb and click the affirmative button (I think it's OK or Create). When it asks what type, choose Linux Bootloader (it's something like that).
    2. Click Add. We're creating your swap partition. This is a ram disk (basically. it's a lot more complicated, but who cares?). The basic rule is make your swap disk double the amount of RAM you have. But, your system will run better the more swap space you give it. If you created a big enough Linux partition to begin with, do whatever you want, just leave 2 gb for your linux installation. For discussion sake, we'll say 500 mb. For type, choose Linux Swap.
    3. Click Add. Click Max. For type, choose Linux Home (it's something like that).
18. Click Save on the hard drive partitioning screen. Depending on the size of your hard drive and the partitions you created, it could take 10 minutes to format.
19. It should now ask what kind of installation you'd like. If you have all the room in the world, go ahead and choose Everything. If you have < 3 gb in your Linux partition, choose Development Workstation.
20. Click continue, and damned if it won't install everything for you. Go get some soup, watch Ground Force or read a book.
21. I may have these next steps out of order. If I do, let me know, and I'll switch them.
22. Now that that's done, it'll ask you if you want to install the bootloader. Say yes. It will then ask you if you have OS 9 installed. Yes, yes you do. Then, it'll ask if you have OS X installed. Yes, yes you do. It will ask you which one you want to boot from by default. Tell it you want to boot into Linux (I'll tell you how to change it later).
23. It should now ask you to create your root password. Make it something easy to remember. If you forget it, you'll have to reinstall.
24. Then, it's going to ask you to create a user. This should be your everyday login. If you're the only one who will be using the computer, make it whatever you want, just something easy to remember. If you're going to share this machine among your co-workers or family members, come up with some convention, and stick to it. You should remember to always log in as this user for everyday use.
25. Next, it should ask you if you want to set up networking (not dialup). If you know this information, by all means fill it out.
26. Now it's time to set up your video card. It's pretty good about finding your video card and identifying it. That means you just have to tell it what kind of monitor you have. If it's in the list, choose it. If not, and you have a GeForce card, go back to custom and choose 1600x1200. Then, choose either 16 or 24 bit color (don't even think about 32-bit - I can't get it to work).
27. And then, it will ask you if you want a text or graphical login. Choose text. This is Linux after all. Get used to the terminal. Plus, if you've got a new Mac, you may have to goof with your video settings.
28. That's it. You now get to reboot! Thus ends the installation instructions, and below begins the post-install instructions.

Post-Installation Instructions

1. When you reboot, you should get a nice white-on-black menu asking you what you want to boot into. It's on a 10 second timer, so you have to be quick. If you followed directions, it should automatically boot into Linux. If not, hit the L key before it does whatever you told it to do during install.
2. Log in as root (don't tell me I've just contradicted myself - I haven't - we have to fix some stuff).
3. This next bit is to fix the updater. For some reason, it gets installed totally broken. So, we're going to fix it:
   1. Make sure the YellowDog CD is still in the drive. If you have one of the brand new G4's without the eject button on the drive, type in: eject /mnt/cdrom to make sure (make sure you close it after you've checked).
   2. type: mount /mnt/cdrom and hit enter.
   3. type: cp /mnt/cdrom/YellowDog/ppc/.yup* /tmp and hit enter
   4. type: umount /mnt/cdrom and hit enter
   5. type: cd /tmp and hit enter
   6. type: mv .yup.db.diff yup.db.diff and hit enter
   7. type: mv .yup.db.init yup.db.init and hit enter
   8. type: mv .yup.db.list yup.db.list and hit enter
   9. type: mv .yup.db.stat yup.db.stat and hit enter
   10. type: cd "/var/cache/yup/Yellow Dog Linux release 2.1-ppc" and hit enter (don't forget the quotes - very important)
   11. type: rm -f yup.* and hit enter
   12. type: cp /tmp/yup.* ./ and hit enter
   13. There, you've fixed the problem. Don't you feel like you've accomplished something?
4. Now that the updater is fixed, you can run yup. If you set up networking, you could run it now. If you just have dialup, wait until you get into Gnome or KDE to set that up.
5. Now, type: exit and hit enter. This should take you back to the login prompt. Log in as the user you created.
6. Once you've logged in, you now need to start up XWindows! Type: startx and hit enter.
7. If the display doesn't start up, and you can't get out of it, reboot the machine. Log in as root and run setup. Try a different monitor/resolution/color depth. Rinse, repeat as needed.
8. Once you make it into KDE (the default), here are some tips. If you'd rather use Gnome, the Desk Switching Tool is in the K menu under System. I personally prefer Gnome, but KDE is good for beginners (who are slightly more beginnery than me).
9. One more thing... The installer always gets my OS X partition wrong. So, we need to fix the bootloader as well:
   1. In KDE or GNOME, open up a terminal window (there are shortcuts to the terminal ALL over the place, they usually look like a monitor).
   2. At the prompt, type: su - root and hit enter.
   3. Type in the root password, and agian, hit enter.
   4. Now, type: emacs /etc/yaboot.conf and hit enter. This should pop up a notepad-looking thing.
   5. The fourth line down should say something like macosx=/dev/hda9 (probably the same as the macos line). If you followed the directions in disk setup, then your OS X partition is the one after your OS 9 partition. So, change /dev/hda9 to /dev/hda10 (or whatever the next number is for you).
   6. If you mostly use OS X or OS 9, you can also change the line that now reads defaultos=linux to either default=macos or default=macosx.
   7. And, if you want the menu to stay up longer, change the delay=10 to a larger number. The delay is in seconds, so I wouldn't suggest anything greater then 30.
   8. Go to Files and choose Save Buffer.
   9. Close the emacs window.

There you go! It's YellowDog 2.1 in 37 easy steps.