[SLUG] greetings and YDL query

[Colm]

[Apologies if this has come through twice]

hi!

My name's Colm, and I'm a long-standing/sitting Mac user from Hebden Bridge.

I have a beige G3 which I want to dual-boot OS 9.1 and Yellow Dog Linux. 
I've got the install disks for YDL, but I have some questions I hope 
someone in this list can help me with.

There are 2 20Gb IDE HDs, one of which is partitioned (this is the "Mac" 
disk), and one which isn't (this will be the "Linux" disk).

My questions are about security. When I install YellowDog, how can I 
make sure that it doesn't *under any circumstances* write to the "Mac" 
disk? (I don't just mean during installation, I mean *at all*)

And also the other way round. I know some software uses "scratch" areas, 
like Photoshop. Is there any system-wide way, in the Mac OS, of making 
sure that *none* of the applications will *ever* write to the "Linux" 
disk? Or else, how can I find out which programs do this? I have loads 
of software, it would take years to go through it all! I thought I would 
be able to "lock" it in Get Info, but no luck.

So far, all anyone has suggested is take out the disk I'm not using at 
the time. Obviously this is not even slightly practical, or worth 
considering! There must be an easier way of doing it?!

And does anyone know how I swap between the 2 OS's? Obviously it 
involves rebooting, but how does the machine know which OS I want?

My knowledge of Linux is minimal, but growing!

Regards

Colm