I am interested in dual-booting a Linux distro (probably Ubuntu) on my 2019 MacBook Pro. Ideally, I would have a shared data partition so that I could access my documents from both OSes. Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to accomplish this?

UPDATE: created macOS, Ubuntu, and data partitions. Was able to mount and access data partition from both systems without any issues. As a bonus, Ubuntu let me replace the standard documents, photos, videos, etc. folders with symlinks to the data partition.

  • @[email protected]
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    610 months ago

    Alternatively, use a Linux-native file system like ext4 or btrfs, and expose it to macOS via a bare-bones Linux guest VM using UTM or similar.

    Kludgy, yes. But NTFS support is kind of shit on both Mac AND Linux.

    Personally I use exFAT for such tasks, but I’m not storing anything important on those drives to begin with.

    • @[email protected]
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      210 months ago

      I’ve had success with an NTFS partition, but I’ve pretty much just used it like a buffer. If I want to move something from one OS to the other, in it goes, reboot, out it comes. Never lost anything that way. This is Ubuntu and MacOS on an ancient MacBook Air.

    • @olympicyes
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      110 months ago

      Paragon Software makes NTFS and EXT4 drivers for MacOS as well. They are referenced in the comment you are replying to. I’d personally go with whichever file system is easier to recover if something gets corrupted.