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Yellow Dog Linux 2.0 Released
lyberth writes: "Finally after almost too much waiting Yellowdog Linux has released the newest linux distro for the wild and wonderful ppc platform. An awsome new installer, support for most of the new mac hardware, and the first distro to include Xfree 4 for the ppc, as standard makes this pretty sexy distro. The press release can be found here."
In this case, all it'll take is for one person to buy it and upload the sources in order to effectively make it downloadable - which is what the GPL ensures. But Yellow Dog doesn't have to do that themselves if they don't want to.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Personally I really like LinuxPPC. I have numerous installations in a number of locations and I don't tend to have many or really any problems that I can't fix myself. I used to admin a mirror server that mirrored a large number of Linux distros and other open-source items (apache, proftpd, mrtg, LDP, etc...) and it was hosted on a box running LinuxPPC 99. It ran quite well for a machine that had as little RAM as it had and suffered as much pounding as it did. I'm still impressed by it. I use it here at work as a personal server and a place to host our network statistics and other information. It's been rock solid since I put up that machine when I started work here 10 months ago. I use it at home as well and haven't had any trouble there. Isn't Tivo also based on LinuxPPC?
Sure you occasionally run into problems with something not compiling. That's not really a LinuxPPC problem but more of a coder problem not writing source to be as portable as possible across common hardware platforms. That happens. Ask an Alpha user. :)
There have been some problems with LPPC in the past like sound support, support for new machines, etc... but the tend to get fixed quickly. Support for new hardware doesn't happen over night after all. Maybe if Apple divulged a little info to the LPPC group a few days or weeks before dropping a new machine on the market, support would come sooner.
I can't honestly say that Linux on PPC-based architectures would be as far as they are today without the support of LinuxPPC Inc. MkLinux never would have gotten it here. YellowDog wasn't even on the scene yet. I don't believe Debian had been ported to PPC yet either. In the Fall of '97, you had either MkLinux DR2.1 or LinuxPPC to choose from. Someone has to buy the newly released pieces of hardware and donate them to developers for progress to be made on supporting those new machines. LinuxPPC usually does this act. All PPC Linux distros greatly benefit from this, not just LinuxPPC. YellowDog does too. So will Mandrake. So will the rest.
Personally I've had really good luck with LinuxPPC and will continue to use and support their efforts. I'd be interested to hear about the problems you encountered though. I'll probably purchase a copy of YellowDog 2.0 just for the hell of it and give it a whirl. Good luck with whichever distro you use.
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How we know is more important than what we know.
Forget the new hardware- I still have a use for it. If I had a "spare" G4 that I wasn't using for photoshop or video editing, I'd be, like, happy. Or something. My 8500, 9500, iMac and powerbook are all running MacOS and they're staying there for awhile. But... I have an anceint, rancid 7100 that's just waiting to rust sitting under my TV.
If you have an x100 system, you have TWO whole options for an OS- MacOS (7.something - 9) and MKLinux. There's no Be, no *BSD, nothing else. If you've never used Linux before, MKL is easily the WORST place to start- it boots to a command line and has to be bootstrapped off of MacOS (meaning you can't boot into it natively) - this is DR3 I'm referring to, not whatever the current build is.
Yellow Dog Linux needs a big shiny merit badge for "most useless web site"- Debian, the BSDs, MKLinux, et al all have easy-to find sections that will tell me what hardware the distro runs on. YDL has no mention of anything, and a search by model numbers gets squat for hits. Going by the web site, it runs on flower power iMacs and powerbook G4s- the only model screen shots they display. Odds are if you have one of these, you're running MacOS- anyone who sets out to buy hardware that will end up as a linux box, from my experience, invariably goes intel. It's cheaper.
Linux, from everything I've heard and seen, runs quite well on older hardware- yet there's no mention of said hardware on the YDL page. Anywhere. MKLinux is ass (from a Mac user's perspective), LinuxPPC took a huge shit when I tried to drop it on my 8500, and the Debian installer is going nowhere unless you already know how to partition and format a disk from the command line, 'cuz from firsthand experience, there is NO help for the damned formatting utility.
I'm a Mac user. I like the idea of unix/linux and want to play around on hardware that's not mission critical- I've unsuccessfully grappled with three different distros and have been resoundly shocked by the horrendous quality of the format/install process. If the OSS community is trying to bring new users to Linux, well.... you guys are doing an amazingly piss poor job of it.
I'll stick with OS X for right now- I can run Apache and photoshop on the same machine without rebooting. AND the default install boots right into a pretty, albeit marginally useable UI. Linux, so far, can't compete in that respect.
They are on the unsupported, but should work list. I take that to mean that they don't have those machines sitting around, so they have no way to support you if you have problems.
We have the same problem where I work. We write drivers to be as portable as possible, but don't promise they will work on all hardware on all the OSs we support. On some OSs we provide source code for the files that are system specific, object files for the rest, and a porting guide. They can port it themselves, but don't expect much support for your hardware if it doesn't work.
There are other drivers where we just provide all the source, it depends on the product, and legal issues with whatever IP is involved.
I also am still running MkLinux on an old 7100/80 and while it certainly isn't the latest/greatest Linux distro, it certainly is functional. There are worse things than learning how to use Linux from the command line. Personally, I have grown to prefer it (and I am not a UNIX guru-- I'm a dyed in the wool Mac fan since my first Mac Plus 12 years ago.) You can learn a lot, even with MkLinux (including that Joy of Joys for a Mac User Linux Newbie: Learning to Mount a Floppy! )
So, if you want to let that 7100 continue to rot under the TV, be my guest... but don't bellyache about it when there ARE options out there you just don't want to explore.
Curious__George,br>
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
So... is that "legal"? I am not a programmer, but if I was, I'd be very upset that they are selling my work but not obeying the terms of the license I released under.
I know there is no requirement that they actually make an .iso for you, but don't they have to at least make the source available?
Yet both those machines are on the "unsupported" list.
It's interesting that the place where Linux is most useful - older hardware that needs a new life - are frequently the machines that YellowDog won't run on. Is anybody actually going to run out and buy a new G4, with MacOS X included... and then put Linux on it? If you're shopping for new stuff to run Linux, would you even consider PPC hardware? The reason to buy a G4 is to get MacOS, otherwise, what's the point?
YellowDog would be great for putting those old 7200 era machines to work...but it won't run on them!
According to this page (3rd party tools):
y .s html#psrv
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/3rd-part
VAST & DEEP Parallel Tools, by Pacific Sierra Research
VAST is a precompiler that automatically applies high-level vector and parallel optimizations to C and Fortran programs. Of specific interest here is VAST-C/AltiVec, which automatically vectorizes C programs for AltiVec-enhanced C compilers, such as the modified gcc distributed by Yellow Dog/Black Lab...
The only issue some of you might have is that from what I read at iMacLinux it is not downloadable until the end of June. It honestly makes since to me to try and recoup some of the costs by having the people who want to try it out first pay for it. IMHO