Yellow Dog Linux 2.0 review

lotion writes "MaximumLinux.org has posted it's take of Yellow Dog Linux 2.0 on a PowerBook G4: "My distribution of choice was Yellow Dog Linux from Terra Soft Solutions. Adam and I had the opportunity to speak a bit with the co-founder and CEO Kai Staats of Terra Soft Solutions at the MacWorld Expo in NYC last month and I must say I was impressed. Not only was I impressed with there 2.0 release but there new hardware that they had rolled out that day as well.""

Comments

Upgrading Is, Quite Literally, Impossible

[waldoj]

A warning to all considering purchasing Yellow Dog 2.0 that already run an earlier version: it's impossible to upgrade.

I bought v2.0 as soon as it came out a few months ago (the same as I did with v1.0), wanting to support Terra Soft by giving them some money. Not having read all of the technical notes before purchasing it, I didn't found out until I got it in the mail that there was no upgrade path from v1.2. I complained on the mailing list, which started a big battle, but solved nothing. I sent another post about a week ago, asking if I could upgrade yet. No replies.

Poking around on their site, I can only find a single reference to the fact that upgrading is impossible. Is that in the installation guide? Nope. The engineer's notes? No sir. Perhaps just a note in their on-line store? Unh-uh. Surely the installation FAQ? No siree Bob. No, you'd have to go to the bottom of the support page and follow the Can I upgrade my previous install of YDL to 2.0? link, which says:

While technically feasible, we have not yet posted instructions on using 'yup!' to update a YDL 1.2 system to YDL 2.0. Please stay tuned as we work out these details.

This would indicate to me that upgrading is possible, just not via YUP, their fantastic apt-get type updating system. That, unfortunately, is not the case. Maybe there are other notices on their site, but I'm yet to locate them.

I was told, at the time that I initially complained, that I just didn't properly appreciate how difficult that it was to get v2.0 out, and that it's really difficult to create a distribution that can be upgraded, and why should I worry about such details anyhow? Didn't I have proper tape backup and off-site storage procedures for my home iMac? Didn't I know that I was a fool to ever upgrade a machine? All of these things are true, but they don't excuse creating a release that without notifying purchasers beforehand cannot be upgraded.

I like Yellow Dog Linux. I use it every day. I like Terra Soft, and I've enjoyed every enounter that I've had with their staff. I think that they've created a fine distribution. It irks me that it can't be upgraded, but that's their perogative and my incentive to run Mac OS X. But their lack of notification that this problem exists makes me nuts. This review, like all others, really makes me want to run v2.0. I sure hope that I can someday, because it looks like a gem of an update.

-Waldo