Slashdot Mirror

Low sales of Apple PPC or entire Power family doesn't mean they are "bad" processors, it means people, ordinary home users can't afford them.

Most of PPC high end processors are used in consoles and those things does 1080p HDTV 3d realtime graphics along with 6 channel minimum positional audio.

I am sure MS Xbox 360 sales and Nintendo already quadrupled total Apple G5 sales. PS 3 coming too and as I said in another story, there are people (including me,if price doesn't change) who will buy PS 3 just for some occasional games but mostly for blu-ray capability and communication capabilities. I mean PS3 sales will surprise everyone.

About the PPC 970, here is something recently shipped:

http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yell owdog-announce/2006-September/000123.html
The default configuration of the Y-Bio JS21 Cluster includes:
  - Dual-core, dual-CPU 2.5GHz IBM 970s.
  - 4GB RAM per blade (1GB per core).
  - 73GB SATA drive per blade.
  - Y-HPC Cluster Construction Suite.
  - Y-Bio bioinformatics suite.
  - Yellow Dog Linux.

Note that it is a weird thing not suitable anything outside science, it is for HPC computing and Biological HPC computing particularly.

Thing is, there is IBM giant there along with their super optimised XL compiler range. Apple could never ship stuff like that, even passing -altivec or -fast flag to gcc is a freaking taboo among OS X developers.

IBM never came up and said "here OS X developers, I give my XL compiler for free" or "Here Apple, use this as an option instead of Gcc" or contacted Gnu PowerPC team about possible massive speed ups.

What Apple users don't get is: IBM is really happy to get rid of end users. They sold the business they invented to Chinese, they want to be a service/mainframe/information company. Freescale is that style too, they are happy with PS3/Xbox etc. sales. Nobody is "crying" out there to lose Apple. It is Apple who gave up a 64Bit RISC platform with 128bit Vector unit since they could never actually use it in its full capacity or never gave developers a pro level compiler to automatically use those features.

IBM calls it SIMD/Vector, Apple uses "Altivec", that is confusing people, it always did.

Server admins aren't impressed by "Altivec" like end user impressive terms, they want real spec. That is what IBM does.

Apple even used "Velocity Engine" term. Altivec is an option for the chips, if you decide your server will do lots of vector processing etc, you opt in for it.

Altivec is no where near dead, real coders make use of it. It is Apple's fault (hopefully not intentional) not to come up with something which will make automatic use of that state of art unit.

If it had no use, Terra Soft which is concentrated on making high end HPC clusters wouldn't be around today.

For example this new HPC beast runs PPC 970:
http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yell owdog-announce/2006-September/000123.html

Thanks to constant bullshit coming from my vendor and his fanboys, I became kind of PPC and Linux news watcher.

At least we won't be left out in the cold as rumoured ;)

If you want to run a OS more Apple like and supported Apple-like, you can buy Terrasoft Yellow Dog Linux but they are a bit High Performance Computing (HPC) oriented.

I can nearly guarantee it will be offered as option on these products.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/

They are in Power board now too.

After Apple claimed their new XServe Intel runs 5x faster than their G5 based Xserve, I would suggest not to select them as a serious server vendor.

As a Quad G5 owner I am actually afraid to install Yellow Dog Linux here while my machine is supported. What would happen if I see 2x faster running machine? Serious..

"Linux with more hardware support"

MS XBox or Cell Power arch CPUs are specialised processors. E.g. the MS Xbox 360 CPU has 3 cores. They have problem with desktop application usage.

I know the Intel or AMD duo-poly has huge impact on personal computing but it is not the case here.

For example a monster CPU named Power6 will ship in months which will have max speed of 5.7 Ghz. If you remember it is a RISC CPU , you can imagine the huge power. The problem is, it is not cheap, not suitable for home computing and needs very advanced coders.

So sadly it is the state after Apple gave up Power architecture with some really fake reasons. It shouldn't happen but it happened.

If you just want to run graphics applications on Linux, there is always Terrasoft machines which runs Yellow Dog Linux which is really optimised for PowerPC Apple uses. For example http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ibm/p5- 185.shtml

Or, a quad core powerpc 970 otw soon: http://projects.ppczone.org/projects.php?program=O SW

Should watch this site for PPC news: http://www.power.org/

It would be RIGHT (in an idealistic sense) for Apple to sell their computers witout OS X.

You mean like they do already?

Apple has always allowed resellers to sell dual boot configurations.

It's Microsoft that disallows dual booting. But they might grant a special exception for Macs.

Back in the mid 90's Apple actively supported porting Linux to Mac hardware with the MkLinux project (working with OSF Research Institute.) It's a Linux distribution based on the Mach micro kernel. Jobs had Apple remove themselves from that project in 1998 and leave Linux on Mac to Terra Soft Solutions an Apple Value Added Reseller that sells Apple hardware with Yellow Dog Linux. The US Navy via Lockheed Martin is a customer of Terra Soft using XServes running Yellow Dog onboard submarines.

Can I buy a Mac without OSX?

Yes. TerraSoft Solutions will sell you a PowerPC-based Mac with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed. Their base configurations are all dual-boot, but I suspect if you customize your order, they'll be willing to sell you a Linux-only system.

Not looking....FOUND:

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/mercury /

Also there's this big company with the initials IBM that still make a aweful lot of PowerPC hardware.

Wait a minute. Why does he care whether a mom and pop store can get volume licensing on windows if he doesn't want to pay for windows anyway?

That's the point, what relevance is volume licensing to the fact that he can indeed buy a whole machine without windows and without windows tax.

This may be news to you but not everybody is comfortable paying monopoly rent, I defy you to buy a next-gen laptop without windows preinstalled.

www.apple.com

http://www.linuxcertified.com/

http://terrasoftsolutions.com/

Actually, yes.

NetBSD
Linux

If you really want it, why haven't you already searched for it?

The most basic search comes up with Terra Soft and the fact that their Linux distro supports Apple ( the obvious choice, at least for the next year or so... just buy a mini and you're done, or buy a high-end model if you like ) as well as IBM Blades and an interesting Genesi desktop which fits the pricepoint between the Apple mini and the IBM blade and Apple PowerMacs...

On the other hand, though, I'm not sure why it makes a difference to you. These AMD chips seems pretty nice, don't they?

Yes and no... Theyre not OS free, but TerraSoft are authorised Apple resellers that will sell you YellowDog Linux or OSX (or both) on your mac

Hi,

As a G5 owner and also thinking about a dual g5 2700 or dual core systems if I am sure about Apple's stance I am checking PowerPC community except Apple which removes pages about how PPC outperforms Intel from their site lately.

Here is the leading PPC Linux for Apple and IBM HPC cluster producers stance on Intel decision:
http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yell owdog-announce/2005-June/000094.html

As we (home users) figured after Mactel decision, Apple is one of smallest PowerPC customers on planet. Here is the PowerPC platform official page (without removed benchmarks :))
http://www.power.org/home

And I hope I don't see another story like that which will make me delete OS X and run PPC Linux...

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436

Its a server centric benchmark and OS X produces very sad results. I just hope Apple workstation does not have similar disadvantages which will make Apple a waster of the architecture they bitch about lately.

Its not AMD versus Intel. Apple certainly lies about the real reason behind the switch to Intel.

What about performance per watt on latest announced FreeScale DUAL CORE CPUs?

If you're seriously looking for a linux laptop, then somewhere like YellowDog might be a good place to start.

They sell powerBooks, iBooks, etc. at the same price as Apple's store, with dual-boot Linux/Mac OS X.

Ever heard of the BriQ? (Picture) It's an entire PowerPC computer in a 5.25" drive form factor. Very cool. I'm not entirely sure if it is still available though as the link I have bookmarked isn't coming up. Either way, I figured it warranted mentioning.

Mercury Systems and terraSoft Solutions ( YDL ) plan a Xserve-like machine. No price yet.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8541
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/mercury /xr9.shtml

The fact that the only way you can buy a Macintosh is bundled with software also means it's not a good platform for open source operating systems.

I think this company would tell you otherwise. (OK, it does ship with software, but its the precious Linux you want to run on it anyway).

Their processor, motherboard, and BIOS are clearly not standard PC components.

As stated above, current Macintosh computers don't use a BIOS, they use OpenFirmware, which, as the name implies, is open. As for the processor and motherboard, what about them is undocumented, that isn't with PC hardware? I'd guess Motorola and IBM are actually MORE open than Intel is about their processors, and most motherboard manufacturers don't tell you that much info beyond what chipset their using, so in this case, they're about as open as Apple is with their motherboards.

this ?
This is a Mac Mini with expandibility right now, but a G5 would make it more attractive.

Terrasoft http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/ is a company that sells IBM powerd desktops that run Linux. I wouldn't doubt they start selling this chips now that they have started selling yellowdog pre-instaled.

No, like I said, you have things reversed. Mac OS computers don't come with any license for Mac OS X built in. They could not even give you a copy of OS X is they wanted. When you buy Mac OS X, you get a license to install only on Mac machines. You have it entirely backwards. And yes, there are Macs that come with Linux that are blessed by Apple. They have a full license to do so granted by Apple: http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/apple/ Do you even use Macs?

Much more likely is that they'd just quietly not obstruct linux installs.

Even more likely, they'd ship with OS X and contract with someone like Terra Soft to be an authorized provider of Apple hardware pre-installed with Linux, just like they do now.

The main point is: given the choice of Linux or OSX, nobody in their right mind would subject themselves to and flavor of Linux on a desktop PC.

Then there are a fair number of nutcases out there. Linus Torvalds is one of them, actually.

If I had a little bit of extra time and/or money, I'd buy a Mac.

Me too. I'd run Linux on it, though. I bought my wife an iBook for Christmas and have spent a fair amount of time fiddling with it. I'd like to have a Powerbook, myself, but I'd install Linux on it. I'd probably use Mac-on-Linux to run the occasional Mac app, but that would be the exception, not the rule. I'm not alone, either, as evidenced by the existence of Yellow Dog, Mac-on-Linux and Terrasoft's line of Macs with Linux pre-installed

If I had a *lot* of extra time and money, I'd *think* about using Linux on a daily basis.

Time, maybe, but why do you include money?

Terrasoft has announced they have no intention of switching or ceasing Linux development for PPC arch.

Terra Soft Solutions' response.

Why forsake Mac OS X on a Mac, well think about non-desktop applications. For example the Navy using Yellow Dog Linux and Mac hardware for a Sonar application: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7789.

For a somewhat detailed list of who is using Yellow Dog Linux see the links on http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/realworld/showca se/

At Apple we sell the Xserve Cluster node which has been used for clusters as large as the 1,566 node COLSA cluster. We also sell it in small turn-key configurations.

Probably the most interesting news lately for OS X for HPC is the inclusion of Xgrid with Tiger. Xgrid is a low-end job manager that comes built-in to Tiger Client. Tiger Server can then control up to 128 nodes in a folding@home job management style. I've seen a lot of interest from customers in using this instead of tools like Sun Grid Engine for small clusters.

You can find some good technical info on running clustered code on OS X here.

The advantage of the Xserve is that it is cooler and uses less power than either Itanium or Xeon, and it's usually better than Opteron depending on the system. In my experience almost all C or Fortran code runs fine on OS X straight over from Linux with minimal tweaking. The disadvantage is that you only have one choice: a dual-CPU 1U box - no blades, no 8-CPU boxes, just the one server model. So if your clustered app needs lots of CPU power it might not be a good fit. For most sci-tech apps, though, it works fine.

If you're against OSX but still like the Xserve, Yellow Dog makes an HPC-specific Linux distro for the Xserve.

Microsoft prevented OEMs from distributing Windows AND other OSes at the same time, Apple does just the same

Oh? What about these?

Apple aren't, but you can buy a Mac running Linux from here. They're an authorised Apple OEM. There you go.

Features http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/ydl.shtml
Purchase http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/purchase.p hp?submit=ydl#ydl

So, why don't you buy a Linux-only laptop then?

Terrasoft Solutions sell Linux-only laptops, desktops and servers using Fedora Core 2 based YDL.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/

They specialise in PPC only, so if you insist on an x86 powered machine then you'd have to find another such shop. I am confident there must be companies just like Terrasoft who specialise in x86 based Linux pre-installed gear.

In fact, a quick google search for "linux preinstalled laptops" shows the this very interesting site as first hit ...

http://mcelrath.org/laptops.html

according to that site, there are plenty of options for people interested in x86 based Linux-only laptops.

I believe Apple has fairly liberal policies for buying a latop without Windows. I hear they're more difficult about OS X refunds, though.

Terrasoft offers Apple hardware with Linux pre-installed. (It still has OS X on it, though.)

The iBook G4. If only apple would release info on the wireless card! That is the only down-er to the apple laptops running linux: no wifi drivers right now. Small, portable, half the price of other laptops of similar size and features.

Given that derivatives of the PowerPC 970 (aka G5) are being used in the X-Box Next and Nintendo's Gamecube follow-on I'm not sure availability will be an issue in the future. Other PowerPC chips are widely used in embedded systems - there's arguably a larger market for the PowerPC architecture (in general) than there is for x86.

Where exactly are the Linux PPC systems? Well, you could start by looking here.

So why not buy a Mac with Linux pre-installed?

Slashdot reported Terrasoft did this earlier this week. But with a full install of Yellow Dog Linux.

You can get it here!

I don't know, I'm just saying that the talk about an OS tax, as usually applied to deals Microsoft has with OEMs, seems to not-quite apply here any more (or less) than it would apply to talking about the OS tax on a Palm device.

A little Googleing gives us a) the Freescale (nee Motorola) AltiVec Libraries (Login required), which includes (among others) strlen and b) this code fragment and c) a more general description.

You can buy new Mac's preconfigured to dual boot OSX and Yellow Dog Linux (RH based) from Terra Soft

Yes and no. You can buy it without OS X, but OS X is normally complimentary with the computer, so there's no associated price drop by getting rid of the OS.

Have fun.

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/

G5 nodes do have excellent performance, but don't assume OSX is all they can run.

We at Terra Soft have just released Y-HPC, our version of Yellow Dog Linux, with a full 64-bit development environment, and a bunch of cluster tools built in.

I'm not much of a marketting drone, but being as I am part of the Y-HPC team, I had to put a shameless plug in. Bottom line is, it kicks OSX's ass any 2 ways you look at it.

Y-HPC

Yup, I know. I've been eyeing Terra Soft's 17" Titanium Powerbook G4, but will have to wait till my bank account can accommodate the $2800 price tag.

Why yes, yes they do

Funny you should mention YDL. Terrasoft (makers of YDL) are the only Apple authorized reseller allowed to package an Apple product with a different OS.

By default they install a dual-boot setup of YDL and OSX. But from what I've been told you can simply request that you don't want OSX installed. which is good if you want to use the entire drive for YDL.

I'm sorry but Apple fanboys should just stay out of this conversation. Apple keeps far tighter control over hardware and OS than Microsoft.

I'm not sure what your remark about Apple fanboys is all about. Your post has basically asked that a person with an opposing viewpoint need not reply? Why did you bother posting at all if you don't wish to discuss things? (If you didn't notice, I've ignored your request)

Also what does it mean that Apple keeps tighter control over the OS than Microsoft. (obviously not the hardware since MS isn't a hardware company). There are secret APIs in Windows. You need to buy an expensive dev kit if you want to write drivers for Windows. but on OSX you can write a driver for whatever USB dongle you have the specs for, and you can just use the bundled compiler and debugger. And the API docs are posted on apple's website. I MS's site also has freely available docs on devel topics too. From my point of view Apple has kept no more tighter grasp on it's OS than Microsoft has. Perhaps even a looser grasp if you consider that Darwin is completely open source. Am I somehow misinterpreting the point of your original statement?

You've obviously not looked very hard. Try the Yellow Dog website for machines pre-installed with Yellow Dog. On the other hand, since they cost the same amount as OS X machines, you'd be better off buying one from Apple and then selling the install DVD (which is transferable and can be used, for example, by someone with an older version of OS X)

I was in a similar situation - after seeing these I went and got an old G3 iMac. It's great - it runs really cheaply, quite fast, and has NO FANS!

I simply switched on apache, postfix, and installed mySql and a few other bits, hooked it up to the stereo and the plasma screen, and now I have a file/music/web/mail/photo/ftp server. Very cheap and super easy.

The only problem was that it got me hooked on Mac's ;)

As an alternative you could try this from the Yellowdog Linux crowd. Very small (fits in a 5 1/4" drive bay) and the G3 ones would be very quiet and easy on the power.