New user help - Quick check of proper distro

[Adam Boettiger]

Hi Folks,

I've read the Ubuntu section on Mac Intel and looked at the distro tables but I can't see that they go up to 8,1 and I'm wondering if there are any Mac users on the list kind enough to help with a quick recommendation?

Desired end result: Dual-partitioned 13" Early 2011 MacBook Pro, OS X Lion / Ubuntu

Done thus far: 

- Partitioned empty space on drive to two additional partitions: 50GB Linux and 8GB swap (boards said swap should be same size as your RAM)

Questions:

1. Boards said that partition drive format did not matter. True?

2. Order of partitions is OS X, Linux, Swap - I did not wish to wipe my existing install of OS X. Will this cause a problem if the new partitions are at the end?

3. It was unclear to me which flavor of Ubuntu I should download. I read things from "64 bit at your own risk and deal with the bugs" to "64 bit if you have 64 bit machine" (I do) to 32 bit for smoothest use, even if you have a 64 bit machine". Then again, many posts were from 2007, 2008 and they appear to be in the process of updating the Mac Intel section.

So 32-bit? And the i386?

Specs:

Hardware Overview:
Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B24
SMC Version (system): 1.68f98
Serial Number (system): Obfuscated
Hardware UUID: 1220DD0A-290F-5FA2-A908-8EB1A77F16E4
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled



Thanks in advance for any help!

Adam