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The BriQ is what you need. "The same form-factor as a CD-ROM drive, the briQ provides an advanced, energy efficient (just 20-40 Watts) and affordable solution for embedded solutions. Need an in-dash MP3 player? Need two computers in the space of one? Slide a briQ into the expansion bay of your x86 or Macintosh computer! " It has linux pre-installed.

"I think Apple makes some sexy hardware"

Which you can buy here [yellowdoglinux.com] if you want better compatibility and a wider choice of cheap software

Everyone already knows where to get a mac with linux.... from yellow dog.

Yes, this is why people run Linux on a Mac. Hard to explain, isn't it? "

I hope they update their website. Currently, it says YDL is for the home user who desires to breathe life into old hardware"..

For those of use who continue to use a pre-G3 at home because that's all we really need, we can't use the new YDL. How many moms/aunts/not-so-technical cousins are using such older machines?

"From the product web page: (Note for SuSE Linux: MultiBay DVD+RW and Intel PRO wireless not supported.) And the base price has changed since the article was published."

If you remove the wireless card from the options (which won't work anyway), and swap the DVD/RW for a normal CD drive, then it seems to reduce the price. I presume it has ethernet, regardless of wifi options?

As to O/S price, they seem to be selling Suse for the same price as Windows XP Home (both cause the notebook to be $50 less than with Windows XP Pro)

Of course, as none of this is relevant to those of us in the UK, it looks like I'll be keeping YellowDog bookmarked for laptops...

However insignificant the numbers might be do these figures include any boxes that or addons that are PowerPC based (other than IBM) - meaning a Mac or other custom box like a Yellow Dog Briq? (Or any of the Macs they sell that ship with Yellow Dog Linux PreInstalled?)

4.0 is coming out soon. 3.x (2003) is pretty good, 2.x was a bit dated.

http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yell owdog-announce/2004-July/000055.html

...is testing the market for linux through their yellowdog resellers?

Not that it is a bad thing. It is definitely a Good Thing (TM). Just take it with perspective.

...is testing the market for linux through their yellowdog resellers?

Not that it is a bad thing. It is definitely a Good Thing (TM). Just take it with perspective.

Linux won't run on Apple's hardware?

MacOS won't run on other PPC systems? I guess it won't run on non-PPC systems either?

I suppose I won't even ask about Darwin.

Yeah, Terrasoft (Yellow Dog Linux) has the fan thing down. Their new 64-bit Fedora port, the inexplicably named Y-HPC, is just about ready for commercial release.

As an aside, it appears YDL is just days or a week or two from shipping Yellow Dog Linux 4. It will be KDE 3.2, X.org, RPM Package Manager 4.3, gcc 3.3, and kernel 2.6.6. The Apple hardware support has always been excellent.

How about an PowerPC Apple powerook with Linux installed?

Here

Still vapour, but in a month you can get one here.

That won't happen. Apple sees Linux as a threat....

I realize you were making a joke but it reminded me of something that I think a lot of people around here will find interesting and intriguing. Check out the briQ. It's an entire PowerPC-based computer that has been squeezed into a 5.25" chassis (the size of an optical drive). So, while you can't have a Mac (per se) in your PC, you can have a computer that can run Mac OS. How freaky is that?

Cheesy marketing drivel, yes, but with a grain of truth. At the risk of being moded down to Hades by Mac lovers, let me very carefully point out that to some of us, OS X is not the operating system to end all operating systems. It has some problems (like a clumsy finder that dumps its bloody .DS_Store files all over every filesystem it can get its hands on), some severe limitations (like a Mail program that doesn't do TLS), and lacks important capabilities (no well-integrated office program except MS Office).

Don't get me wrong, OS X is probably the best operating system available for pure-consumer type users. When my co-worker complained to me a few days ago that he caught some sort of dialer virus thingy, I told him (politely) to get rid of the problem (Microsoft) and buy a Mac. Is Linux for him? No. He would be very happy with Apple's closed-world, choice-is-bad philosophy.

Some of us, however, like choice, and don't want to, say, pay extra for modern features like virtual desktops that Apple's engineers consider too confusing for us and are covered by shareware. I want a modern mailer (good grief, even the 0.5 BETA of Mozilla Thunderbird has TLS), I want Konqueror instead of the brain-damaged Finder, I want my right-click-lelf-click-done! mouse back. But I love the hardware: My iBook G4 is quiet under heavy loads, for example, and battery life is good.

Linux on a PowerPC gives you the best of both worlds -- even more so because you can use Mac-on-Linux to run your Mac OS X applications from inside Linux. Nobody is talking about wiping OS X off the computer (well, except maybe for this guy), because, remember, though Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are jealous computer gods, Linus is not. I did dual-boot for years with Windows before swiching completely. You can have your cake and eat it, too.

A lot of Mac people I have gotten to know after buying my iBook have no idea how good KDE and Gnome have become, they seem to think that Linux users still have to figure out the refresh parameters for X11 by hand. With more and more Linux people moving to PowerPC hardware, I think we'll see more discussions between OS X and Linux users. Linux can give OS X a good run for its mon-, er, can force Apple to try harder, a lot harder, in fact. And that is good for Mac fans, too.

There is an announcement on the YellowDogLinux.com page regarding ... some custom hardware from IBM.

As for space, that was the one reason I could think of. You do save on racks with the Blade form factor. However, it's not strictly 2 to 1. Since each BladeServer JS20 has only 80% of the processing power, you have to buy five fourths as many of them for equivalent performance, which partly negates the floor space savings.

Also, the JS20 consumes more power because it (apparently) uses the original 970, not the Xserve's 970FX. This means bigger power bills.

Forgive me if I'm wrong here. Reading http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/ or the link in the article:

'Y-HPC' -- Terra Soft's new 64-bit offering will be available pre-installed on Apple, IBM, and Momentum 970-based hardware, from the Terra Soft Store, and for download from the forthcoming YDL.net Professional account.
and

Built upon Yellow Dog Linux v3.0.1, a beta version of Y-HPC is now available for download via YDL.net Enhanced accounts, offering double-precision, 8GB memory addressing, 64-bit tool chain, and the 2.6 kernel.

The key bits being the references to YDL.net Enhanced & Professional accounts. Enhanced costs $85 which isn't completely free as in beer. Granted, that is cheaper (possibly quite a bit cheaper over time/multiple release??) than OS X. However, I don't think it's the cost factor that will be the major attraction. As you mention, some server apps may be faster on the G5/Linux platform rather than G5/OS X. When choosing between OS X & YDL for the desktop, I personally don't see the advantage for the mainstream user (i.e. the largest group of Mac users).

All that said, having this choice is a good thing and if I ever get a G5, I'll give it a go :)

Check these pages for who and why.

Check these pages for who and why.

Why is this important? Some of us really, really like Apple's hardware -- my iBook G4 was worth the money just because it is silent even under heavy loads, goes to sleep (and wakes) like a charm, and has a pretty impressive battery life compared to most x86 laptops. But OS X comes with a certain closed-system, choice-is-bad philosophy that just drives me nuts. Also, some of the programs included even in 10.3.3 are downright primitive -- Mail doesn't even have TLS in Panther -- and there is no cleanly integrated office package outside of MS Office.

This is where Linux (or dual-boot) comes in: Virtual screens, Kmail, OpenOffice 1.1 without having to boot a second window system, and if you still want to run OS X applications, well, you just do it from Linux with Mac-on-Linux. Hey, have your cake and eat it, too!

I can see lots of people moving to iBooks and PowerBooks and G5s -- heck, in that sense, I'm a switcher -- but keep in mind that just because there is a glowing Apple on the cover, it doesn't mean that there isn't a penguin on the inside. Mac OS X is good if you can stomach its closed-world, Steve-knows-best philosophy, but a lot of people will want the best of both worlds.

Yellow Dog Linux

That's been possible for a while. Terrasoft Solutions, the people who port Redhat to the PPC, sell a computer that come in a 5.25" CD-ROM-style enclosure.

I think your argument doesn't quite fly. Its flaw is the notion that Apple makes most money from software and not hardware. The opposite is true.

If people buy Apple hardware to run Linux on it, that's no threat to Apple, as long as they sell that hardware. Indeed, for some times now Terrasoft has been selling Xserves pre-loaded with Linux with Apple's blessings.

The iApps are just there to entice people to buy hardware. Their modest -- and very reasonable -- price is aimed at recovering some costs. Plus, they could be ported to Linux if necessary, as iTunes has been ported to Windows -- to increase sales of iPod hardware.

So, as you seem to imply, Linux isn't going to shift the balance in favour of PC hardware. One reason for that may be that running Linux on an Apple is the ultimate sign of rebellion. But that's just fine with Apple. Plus, they are going to gain new market share by allowing all possible applications running on Linux to run on a Mac too. Either with Linux, or with X11 and/or KDE running on OS X. Therefore Apple has no reason to be against Linux and Open Source.

If you wanted to.

You can get them here. They take orders online.

That's not a very good deal

But the specification was a laptop without WinXP on so I don't see the problem with OS X anyway

My post was in reply to this one. I'd like to be able to buy a laptop without paying for an OS I don't use. Thats about my only problem with it.

You can get them here. They take orders online. But the specification was a laptop without WinXP on so I don't see the problem with OS X anyway.

Microsoft used the powerpc in little endian mode. But the PPC 970 apparently lacks a little endian mode.

Here you go.

The only thing that's "proprietary" in the mac is the motherboard and processor.

The only thing that's "proprietary" in the mac is the motherboard and processor.

The only thing that's "proprietary" in the mac is the motherboard and processor.

Last year, I bought an 8500 for $60 on ebay, loaded it up with cheap ram (check here) and thus began my adventure of endless tweaking of X mode lines, etc. :-) But seriously, it was fun.

Also, the yellowdog-general and yellowdog-newbie mailing lists are pretty newbie-friendly.

HTH

Heh, beats me. :) From what I've seen toying around with my gf's iBook (900 Mhz, bought last Christmas for cheap 1200 Euros since it's a G3) OS X is really nice, and I wouldn't want to run Linux on it, either. Terra Soft have some sort of reasoning why you'd want to, but it's, well, very spiritual.

Have you tried buying an Apple without an OS? You can't, but no-one ever moans about Apple tax...

Yellow Dog for the G5 has been available for a while; it's working OK in my office.

You can buy a Mac with PPCLinux on it, over here actually. They also sell non-Apple PPC hardware.

You can buy a Mac with PPCLinux on it, over here actually. They also sell non-Apple PPC hardware.

Yes although they cost as much as one with OS X, and unlike Windows your copy of OS X is yours to do with as you wish, so you can sell it if you choose.

Why not buy one of the (much cheaper) Apple boxes and run Yellow Dog Linux on it?

TerraSoft sells Dual 2GHz G5's for $2999 with Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled.

Why not buy one of the (much cheaper) Apple boxes and run Yellow Dog Linux on it?

TerraSoft sells Dual 2GHz G5's for $2999 with Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled.

"Micro AmigaOne" = Mai Logic's upcoming Teron Mini (mini-ITX).

The $800 "AmigaOne XE" is a Teron PX. Terra Soft was going to sell these boards at Mai Logic's normal RRP of $500, but TSS found out that it was a buggy piece of junk, so they dropped it like a hot potato (in contrast to moneygrubbing cowboy outfits like Eyetech, who are happy with only selling to slightly retarded "Amiga" trademark fanatics).

So, whenever Mai Logic releases the Teron Mini, it seems like you'll get it 60% cheaper if you buy it normally, without Eyetech's/AmigaInc's 60% "let's pretend there are still Amigas" tax.

Only AmigaOS users have to worry about that tax on their hardware (and then paying for AmigaOS as well). You'll still be able to buy the same hardware normally.

One I forgot to mention too:

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

The Terrasoft Solutions BriQ. a G3 or G4 in a box that fits in a 5.25" drive bay

http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/briQ/in tro.shtml

A G5 with Linux Pre-Installed Finally, a Mac that I *might* consider buying.

I was a die-hard YDL user from day one, buying copies from Terrasoft to support the company and even preordering 2.0. Imagine my surprise when I found that it was simply impossible to upgrade to 2.0.

They told me that I would have to back up my machine, wipe the hard drive, install anew, and then copy my data and configuration back over. I had just started my own business, and the system in question was my first Apple (and only computer at the time), a Rev. A Bondi iMac. With only USB ports and virtually no USB devices out there at the time, I didn't have any method of copying data off of the machine. Sure, it would be good practice to upgrade in the manner prescribed by Terrasoft, but for somebody like me, running a simple home SMTP and HTTP server, it ought not be required.

I never did install YDL 2.0; the discs are still sitting in the box. I saved my pennies and bought an eMachine for $300 a couple of months later. I'm still using that machine as my basic home SMTP and HTTP server, and I haven't used a Mac as a server or run Linux on a Mac ever since. The iMac lives on in the home of my brother and his wife, running OS X.

I've been looking to run Linux on my G3 iBook and my G4 Powermac, and I've tried Gentoo and SuSE thus far. I've been considering Yellowdog, but I'm not going to get back on that train if I'm just going to get screwed. Does anybody know if Terrasoft has cleaned up their act, and is now making it possible to upgrade between major releases?

-Waldo Jaquith

Here is your dream come true.
My experiences w/ Yellow Dog have all been very satisfactory, and I'm looking forward to a G5-based laptop in the future.

Thanks. I didn't know about this, and it looks excellent. No more need for a special partition, just what I was after.