linux on ppc
hey there,
i have some experience putting linux on a mac (pb g3) so here's what i learned...
you do need to repartition your drive and reinstall the os. with os 9 it's easy -- copy everything from your harddrive to a backup disk, repartition and erase, then copy everything back and it works as normal. OS X, with all of its hidden files, requires backing up data (ie. Home folder, applications, etc.) then reinstalling from CD, which, yes, is a pain in the neck.
there are commercial utilities to resize the partitions -- they all seem to cost betwen $50 to $100. never used one myself but they exist...
linux doesn't actually need to install on the first partition -- i have my os 9 set up on the first partition. it does require a bootloader. if you use mklinux with OS 9 (which is basically an extension that allows you to switch to linux while booting os 9) then you don't need a bootloader on the hard drive. but mklinux is something of a pain in the neck for upgrading kernels, plus (i believe) it only works on HFS partitions, not HFS+. the other option is using a bootloader on disk, which must be placed on a new partition, but doesn't have to be the first one. the best is yaboot, which allows you to boot using different kernels and also dual-boot os 9 or os X.
and linux is worth checking out! especially with old computers...