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In Depth With Jason Haas And LinuxPPC
AcaBen writes: "MacSlash's Les Harris did an
in depth interview
with Jason Haas of LinuxPPC about their upcoming release and enhancements. It also includes some news of his recovery from the bad auto accident
(covered by Slashdot)
he was involved in, and provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X."
We had a dreadful time getting PPC to work on our Mac, but yellow dog runs like a charm.
I am wondering whether the interviewer was being kind, or had only done a portion of their homework.
provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X.
I didn't really see the article do that. I only saw a vague statement to the effect that most people who use MOSX probably won't know what an X server is. Which may be true, but it won't stop most of us who use LinuxPPC now from using an Xserver on a Mac (now, X's inherent problems may, but whatever).
But I do wonder how Linux can compete with MacOS X. Maybe....
Price? For a while, yes. While Mac OS X is still sold as an upgrade for current HW owners, unless it's really cheap, LinuxPPC will probably be cheaper. But at some point, MOSX will come with all apple machines.
Applications? Anything for Linux can and probably will be ported to OSX. Already I find binary RPMs for MOSX before I find RPMs for Linux PPC.
Ease? Ha!
Performance? Maybe. I think that the reason that Apple dropped non-G3 machines from the supported list for MOSX was that they didn't have the processor speed to keep the user experience snappy. I've heard stories of opening and closing the dock munching 75% of the CPU. LinuxPPC runs nicely on my 200 Mhz 604e. (Though how an OS that ran beautifully on the 68040 33mhz NeXTStation I have sitting next to me got this slow, I can't say).
In short, I think performance is the best competitive bet for LinuxPPC. That, and fanatical loyalty.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
It's not the 52-week low as much as the percentage of plummet. 50% is a big loss. Imagine losing $.50 for every dollar you had - or, more appropriately, $500,000 for every one million. See the difference?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Does anyone have any info on Linux support on RS/6000? Yellowdog Linux claims to work on older single processor RS/6000's but not the newer ones. I called IBM and they said there was no Linux support for their RS/6000's at all and no plans for such. Does anyone know what is holding this up. IBM has been very forward thinking about supporting linux on its hardware, so this seems odd to me.
And why does Yellowdog only run on old uniprocessor boxes? Is Linux's multi-processor support for G4's lacking in some way? RS/6000 are great price/performance servers and its a shame they only run AIX.
Of course, assuming a desktop application, x86 is the best bet in performance/price. Far and away. I also inquired into motherboards for Sparc and Alpha chips at LWCE, and in both cases the board alone was again around $1000 (entry-level models at that!)
;-) If I was a cold, emotionless pencil pusher, I wouldn't have given PPC a second thought. Unless there is some specific advantage PPC gives you, it's more an issue of getting a higher-quality system (and all the associated warm fuzzies) versus nailing that global perf/$$$ maxima.
I was interested in PPC mostly out of curiosity/novelty, and a desire to have a top-quality machine, more so than any specific plans to do something with Altivec. (And I don't mind the sound of fans-- heck, I don't sleep as well at nights without it
P.S.: Building a G4 Linux system would present an even more complex issue with drivers. The boards have a regular PCI bus, so you can slip in just about any card you like, but you have to ensure that you can compile the driver source. Vendor-supplied binary drivers are useless as they are almost invariably x86-only.
iSKUNK!
Big versus little endian
Good point. I haven't had to deal with this issue in the past few years and forgot about it. Thanks.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Unfortunately, IBM never released the layout files ("Gerbers") because of problems with the northbridge. The project's pretty moribund these days, but who knows? Maybe IBM will revisit the idea of creating a reference design for the 405 chips (and similar), and we'll have inexpensive, third-party PPC-based motherboards yet.
Tom Geller, co-founder, The OpenPPC Project
Tom Geller
If the stock continues to plummet, will OS X be any competition at all. Pretty, yes, but as recently seen by the G4 cube consumers can only buy so much of "pretty" to drive a company's profits up until they want "functional".
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
People weren't talking about his accident much afterwards, and I assumed he'd had serious a brain injury or something. I'm really glad he's OK, even if LinuxPPC may have a problem with OS X now on the scene.
Maybe you already have PPC machines that run a less desirable OS. Maybe you think the PPC chip is the faster chip within given price ranges. Maybe you work in some graphics shop full of G4s and would like to dual boot or convert some machines. Maybe you like the nifty case design of the iMac, the G4s, and the Cube. Or maybe you are halfway crazy and just need a little help getting over the edge.
I do not have a signature
I support Haas's decision not to replace his brain with an overclocked Athlon, as the heat problem would have forced him to move to colder climate.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
You can also get to it at http://www.linuxppc.org/news/jhaas/, which does work.
PPC >> x86
That goes for architecture design, thermal properties, size, and (alas) price.
I recently built myself a new workstation. It ended up being AthlonTB-based, but boy did I look hard for a reasonably priced non-Apple G4/CHRP motherboard. The things don't exist. I asked a Motorola rep at LWCE2000 about the company's line of PPC ATX boards. Their most inexpensive model is over a thousand dollars!
Then again, he said those were made for controlling industrial equipment, so the manufacturing tolerances are a little tighter than necessary for a desktop system. But the rep did say something quite enlightening: the reason you don't see cheap G4 boards is that Apple would never EVER allow MacOS to run on them, and because of that, no one sees a market. It's a damn shame....
iSKUNK!
NO CARRIER
(Has a nice ring to it... :-)
granted people here don't like shelling out money for anything let alone as OS but I for one will be shelling out my (insert $$ value here) for a version of NeXTSTEP running on big hardware. I don't think I'll need the seperate partition for linux anymore.
Can't say much about the hardware and core OS (though I've heard my share of good things about the NeXTCubes, and gosh they looked killer), but for the working environment, you could always go with GnuStep.
Hmmm... perhaps if you had some Mac hardware, installed [the microkernel-based] Darwin, and built GnuStep... that would probably be as close to a free OSX/OpenStep as one can get, yes?
iSKUNK!
Try This http://www.macslash.com/articles/00/09/28/1858238. shtml
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Once I get my Apple Cube, it runs LinuxPPC. Why? -True multitasking. Older MacOS isn't too hot with MT, whereas I can work the Gimp and pull up a java-heavy website with Mozilla at the same time. -Much more customizable GUI. I use GNOME and KDE. At the same time. -Easier to upgrade kernels. I visit SourceForge, or some other kernel repository, and voila! -CivCTP works on RISC processors :)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
But why, unless I get it really really cheap, would I opt for a PPC to run Linux over x86 architecture?
Years ago I picked up a cheap Sun SparcIPX to plop Linux on because drivers for x86 were few, far between. I expect drivers are less of a problem for this same reason, as video, sound, etc. has less variation. Perhaps I've answered my one question, but what perspective do others have on this?
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I never realized the seriousness of a brain injury until reading it, that guy seems lucky to be alive and still able to comprehend Linux.
Bleh!
LinuxPPC seems nice enough I have installed it and run it for a time on newer macintosh hardware. But the X/GNOME/KDE GUI has nothing on what IMO is the best GUI made, NeXTSTEP 3.3/OPENSTEP 4.X had a very easy to use unified FAST, must I repeat FAST interface that users were not scared of, on a 33mhz 68040, I ran more applications than this damned 233MXX laptop running linux could EVER run.
With a newer version of the Mach Kernel and an upgrade from 4.3bsd to 4.4bsd-lite, the under pinnings of MacOS X are second to none, granted people here don't like shelling out money for anything let alone as OS but I for one will be shelling out my (insert $$ value here) for a version of NeXTSTEP running on big hardware. I don't think I'll need the seperate partition for linux anymore.
Guttermouth is a really good band.