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PowerPC Linux Beats Apple To Full G4 SMP Support

Posted by timothy on from the whaddya-know? dept.

dburcaw writes: "PowerPC Linux developer Troy Benjegerdes just released the first patch adding SMP support for the brand new dual processor Power Macintosh G4 systems just hours before Steve Jobs is set to release the Mac OS X Public Beta at Apple Expo in Paris. This makes PowerPC Linux the first available operating system to contain full SMP support for the new machines. The patch and test binary kernel is available here."

2 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Clarification: LinuxPPC, our claims, AltiVec by haaz · · Score: 5

    Hi all, this is Jason Haas, one of the co-founders of LinuxPPC Inc. I'm mostly famous for alost having been killed by this drunk fuck in a massive SUV back in March. ;-)

    LinuxPPC is not making any claims about Apple. We are not making any claims about our alleged "superiority" over Apple. We're thousands of times smaller than Apple, for one thing. Linux _might_ be superior to the MacOS, performance-wise, but Linux in general still has a ways to go before ease of use becomes more standard. We never compare ourselves to Apple. Never have, don't plan on doing that in the future.

    Second, we're not announcing the SMP support. It will soon be on our FTP server, however.

    Third, AFAIK, AltiVec (a.k.a. "Velocity Engine") has kernel support in some kernels, and Motorola has released patches for gcc, though I don't know if they've been intergrated yet.

    Personally, I think it has a limited future. What would it help under Linux, anyway? ;-) (I honestly don't know!)

    Last, I am doing much better despite Jerk Boy's efforts to kill me (literally). He didn't try hard enough. ;-)

    Best,

    Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

    --
    -- haaz.
  2. Wow. by Darchmare · · Score: 4

    Apple beats LinuxPPC to a halfway usable user interface by around 16-17 years.

    *yawn*

    I'm impressed by LinuxPPC. I order each release they put out, and it's not bad given their marketshare. But bragging about SMP support when Apple has a lot more fish to fry is kind of stupid.

    Other people have beaten Apple to the punch in other stuff. It's not really that big of a deal. I'm more concerned at this point that Apple isn't going to fix some of the ... erm ... interface oddities in the OSX release.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)

    --

    - Jeff