Tri-boot powerbook Lombard?

While I have not done it, it should be very possible. If I remember right, yaboot will ask for an OS at prompt, at which you can either select classic (9), MacOS X, or Linux. I'm not sure if BSD-land has an equivelent for this.

I'm pretty sure you could have MacOS X and MacOS 9 on one partition, while the Linux, and it's swap space must be on their own. I suggest making the Linux root (/) partition the first, followed by the swap (rule of thumb, 1.5x the amount of real RAM you have), and then the rest all for MacOS, which should probably be HFS+. Install MacOS first after all that partitioning, then Linux. Linux will set down yaboot, and you should be good to go after that.

I've only done this with my Rev A iMac, but it should be applicable to any NewWorld machine.

Does OS X still have to reside on the first partition on a Lombard? It was required on some early G3s, but I don't know for sure re: Lombard.

That limitation was, I believe, that X has to reside upon a parition that is no larger than 8GB. I'm not sure about the residing of the root partition. Not sure.

LEM shows no such warning, but states that sadly the DVD drive included with such laptops (bays?) is not supported in MacOS X, which makes me think that booting and installing using them would be difficult. But up to 10.3 was offically supported by Apple, 10.4 with XPostFacto.

wow... im acatually doing the exact same thing with my lombard. Im setting it up to boot OS 9, OS 10.3.x and Ubuntu. Now, you will need a bootloader; something that'll let you boot which ever OS you choose. Now, im still working on mine (i have yet to get around to installing OS X) however, i have OS 9 and Ubuntu loaded, and if you want to discuss this project, myself and some other Linux knowlidgable people usually hang out in the Applefritter IRC channel. As for the HD, i do have my OS X partition at the beginning of the drive, and it is under 8 gigs, but, i may have just done this out of habit from installing X on other older machines.