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Mandrake Linux 8.0 Final Released For PPC
rstewart points to this press release, writing: "Mandrake has released version 8.0 final for the PPC architecture. Now Mac users have a choice of distributions between Mandrake and Yellow Dog. Now if only we could easily buy parts and build them cheap in our basements. " And PPC choices already include SuSE, LinuxPPC, Debian, NetBSD and more.
There are just too many flaky things needed on various systems... whereas with RedHat 7.1 it was boot off the cd and you're done.
I know someone will post about how the cds are bootable on Mac, too, and they are, but it just isn't the same. On the old world macs you have to make a fake system folder on a partition... it's a big old mess.
Newbies have enough to worry about without throwing PPC specific issues into the mix - if you have experience, however, PPC is a nice platform.
For the sorts of battles that RedHat is off to fight, the Intel space is plenty big enough, and getting bigger by the day.
Regardless of whether or not RedHat is doing it, or YellowDog, or Mandrake, Linux itself is still being ported to yet another architecture.
That's good news, no matter how you look at it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
My previous employers got all hot and bothered over buying the newest apple hardware. I wanted to get my job done, so I installed Linux on my G3 at work. It did everything that I needed it to do, and I was grateful to be able to run Linux without creating too many waves in the company.
People like you fascinate me. You recoil at anything that is different, or anything that challenges your rigid preconceived notions. Pull you head out of your ass and try to look at the good in the world once in a while.
The middle mind speaks!
I would buy a G4 cube on e-bay and slap linux on it. An inexpensive, small, quiet box would be perfect for my one bedroom apartment. And yes, I prefer Linux to OS X. I run both on my G3 (given to me, so it cost nothing) right now, and spend 95% of my time in Linux.
The middle mind speaks!
It's all about software. You can't run Microsoft Word or Photoshop under Linux. That's the problem. OS X supports all of the existing MacOS software, plus great Unix software like Apache. It's the best of both worlds.
I disagree with this. While OSX has plenty of people excited, and does have the cool factor, you talk to anyone using it and you'll find battlescars. No one is wholly pleased with the product (including me), and while it is good and exciting, the bugs do hurt. A lot.
/. for the excitement over KDE 2.2, or the new kernel releases for example. This stuff is exciting, and the people who know about it are just as excited by linux developments as are Mac people by OSX developments.
Linux also has problems, and they're very different than the ones in OSX. I can't do a single click program install in linux the way I can in OSX, but my floppy drive has no problems (a real OSX problem for my work.) This is to say that neither OS is perfect at all, and both could use improvement.
But to say people aren't excited about linux and are excited by OSX is a load of garbage. When I show people Linux it definitely scores cool points with them. More so than OSX, which has been running really slow on our legacy iMacs.
Despite the appearance of OSX and darwin, people keep using Linux, despite it's less simple and unified interface, because they have faith in it, same as you say about OSX users. More so than Apple, because many of us have been burned by Apple in the past and know that no one can screw us over in the Linux world.
I would disagree that OSX has the mindshare of everyone, because most every consumer who looks at it says "Cool, but it's not a PC, I can't run it, I'm not going to run it." You should see the problems we have trying to get people to use one of the three iMacs with OSX rather than the one PC here. It may be pretty, and it may have some good stuff under the hood, but it's not in the mindshare of "most everyone" any more than Linux is.
All in all, I think people are as excited about Linux as they are about OSX. While they may focus on doing different things well, if all you're judging on is "OSX looks cool" then you're not really measuring the level of excitement for linux. Just look at the posts on
Apple has done a really good job on OSX, and I'm looking forward to it getting much better, but to say it's generating excitement where linux is not is absurd. Linux has developed so much in the past two years since I started using it, and it will develop even more in the coming years, and I guarantee as it lands on more and more machines you'll see the excitement build, hopefully in the mainstream as well.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Apple has a single look and feel. This stems from a single company putting together a single project, and forcing everyone who wants to program for that platform to conform to the project guidelines. The problem with Linux development (and also it's greatest asset) is that there is no unifying entity with a single vision. All sorts of Linux developers work on distinct projects, release them slowly, and all have different visions of what Linux should be.
... you name it, every week. There's no better way to stir the hearts of 20 somethings than advertising 30 second clips on MTV.
My two cents.
As a result, there is no big bang, no enormous release, and there will never be a relevation like MacOS 9.1 to OSX, nor Windows 3.1 to 95... As long as there is no managing Linux Headquarters saying to ALL of its developers "ok guys, you can't release your product for 1.5 more years, and make sure it follows our rules exactly- any deviation will force us to drop your app," Linux will never be able to market in the way Apple or Microsoft do. And truthfully, I never want to see Linux turn into this.
Most importantly, Apple has a marketing team. It has enough resources to show back cover spreads of single products in Time, Newsweek, US N&WR,
Could it be because MacOS X, as a desktop OS, is at least 5 years ahead of Linux in terms of providing casual users the software and feature support they need to do their jobs?
Personally, i use Mandrake 8.0RC1 on my iMac, since it only has 64MB of RAM and its 266MHz CPU won't drive OS X very well - however, the video acceleration in X is piss-poor, and the idea that this system would be installable (The Mandrake installer screwed up fairly badly when trying to partition my disk, and had to be repaired by using pdisk) by joe average is laughable.
The idea that Mandrake 8.0RC1 (maybe they have a new ati driver for X in 8.0 final) provides acceptable desktop performance on a Rev. A iMac is also laughable.
Linux is great for people like me who are prepared to invest the time and effort to make it work for them, but theres no way 95% of the current Mac user base would want, need, or get excited about Linux because MacOS X is quite obviously a superior solution.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I think a lot of the mind share has to do with mr jobs.
Steve Jobs is a computer legend, no matter what you think of him personally he deserves a lot of credit for mainstreaming the gui/ mouse and pushing the computing envelope. ( a gui computer with 128k ram and no hard drive.... even today it seems somewhat amazing)
So when steve talks, lots of people take notice. I think alot of the hype around OS-X has less to do with what it is than what people expect the "next" (no pun intended) thing in os's to be, and steve is selling this future.
He's also captured the imagination of unix folks with open source underpinnings and the ability to run word and photoshop and grep / script at the same time. Its GCC based so expect a lot of that nice GNU software will run on OS-X in short order making it more powerful at little expense to apple.
We'll see how it works out. Can't hurt to have more unix boxen out there though, especially in schools.