The current kernels have HFS and MSDOS filesystem support (for the
mount command) built into the kernel.
 
Bibek Sahu <scorpio@dodds.net> reports on linux-pmac that it's great
when mounted read-only, and overwriting files works, but that
creating files messes up the HFS B-tree. (Not badly, he reports.)
Anyway, the recommendation is to mount hfs partitions read-only for
the time being.
 
jonh@cs.dartmouth.edu
 
recent development in the hfs_fs stuff suggest that its now stable enough
to use r/w.  I've always used it rw, haven't lost anything yet.
hfs_fs has been submitted to Linus for inclusion in the Official Linux
tree as a beta module.  there is still a problem with deleting files.
matesch@students.wisc.edu

Linux/PPC 1999 Q3 Distribution seems to have fixed the problems with using hfs filesystems. It still won't mount hfs+ drives, but it has a relatively stable and secure base for hfs. The current drawback is that the module still doesn't recognize hidden files or folders, and doesn't ignore them, or the resource fork folders on the drive's filesystem.