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Yellow Dog Linux 2.1 Shipping

Posted by timothy on from the oh-ess-what dept.

Durindana indicates this announcement of the newest version of Yellow Dog Linux, writing: "PowerPC fans, this is a big deal. YDL's certainly improved over its former state lately; hopefully 2.1 continues that trend. Does this make it the "best of class" (Mandrake's favorite term) for PPC?" There are at least four strong Linux-on-Mac contenders now, which is nice to see.

8 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Why YLD is great for the Linux community. by heldlikesound · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even as a hardcore Mac user (start up the flamethrowers), I have always been sympathetic to the open source cause and been interested in the dev. of Linux. However, without and old PC to muck around with, I'd never had the chance to try it out for myself. Along comes YLD, and now I'm able to install Linux on my old Power Computing (apple clone) machine. There were a few hiccups, but due to all the great Linux resources on the web, I figured them out and now I have my very own Linux box! Anyway, YDL gives mac users that WANT to get more techincal a chance to and provides the Linux community with good exposure, and that's always a good thing!!!

    --


    Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
  2. SuSE for PPC vs YD ? by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How does YD compare to SuSE's PPC offerings? Looks like SuSE has put together a pretty nice PPC distro too:

    http://www.suse.com/us/products/suse_linux/ppc/ind ex.html

  3. Linux 4 PPC is a great Mac Saver... by toupsie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I have been using Linux on Macs going back to Apple's Mklinux DR2 distro to maximize my old Macs. Unlike my x86 boxes, when my Macs get long in the tooth, I can't bear to throw them away or sell them. I can't tell you why but I just can't part with them. That's the beauty of Linux and Darwin. Once they are no longer useful for my desktop work, they are backed up, reformatted, LinuxPPC installed (sometimes Darwin) and stuffed into my server closet until they blow their motherboards (which hasn't happened). The 604e chipped PowerMacs make great e-mail and web servers for a small to medium sized business. I can't wait to try out Yellow Dog's latest distro. I have had such great results with the LinuxPPC folks. These guys are supposed to be top notch PPC folks.

    On a side note, I finally tried out Mandrake 8.1 x86. That is an AWESOME graphical install!!! Almost as nice as installing Mac OS X.

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  4. Re:ext3 by toupsie · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Does OS X have journaling?

    Not yet. Currently the only choices for filesystems are HFS+ and UFS. I would love to have a journaling file system. Great thing about Mac OS X is the open source project, Darwin. So even if Apple doesn't add a journaling FS some open source hacker can!

    Now if I can only get X Windows w/ GNOME running smoothly on my G4/Dual 500, I would be in OS paradise!!!

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  5. Re:do it the right way by treellama · · Score: 3, Interesting

    NetBSD is great for a lot of platforms; it's running right now on my alpha, decstation, and i386. But for macppc it's just not there compared to linux. The documentation is even worse than with other major netbsd platforms (netbsd documentation is pretty bad/outdated). It _still_ comes with XFree 3.3.x (yes version 4 is in the package system), so no easy accelerated video if you've got a Radeon. Plus to boot it you have to muck around in OF trying to figure out the right settings (which if you have a machine built after 1996 aren't included in the install docs), compared to Yellow Dog's hacky-but-easy-to-use booter.

    Now, I prefer netbsd to anything else (except OS X on my mac) but it needs a lot of work on macppc (mainly documentation-wise). I just wish I were up to the challenge.

  6. Re:Why? by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Linux can run all MacOS 9 software using Mac-on-Linux, which is the functional equivalent of "Classic" which MacOS X uses to run the same applications. Linux PPC supports an aweful lot of PCMCIA cards on the powerbook that OS X doesn't. Linux PPC has better power management than OS X (yes I'm serious). Linux can play DVD movies on the external monitor of a powerbook, but OS X cannot. Linux has a journalling filesystem and OS X doesn't. OS X is loaded with local root vulnerabilities, and probably a lot of undiscovered remote vulnerabilities as well.

    Honsetly OS X hasn't got that much going for it.

  7. needs better ease of use by jchristopher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yellog Dog is trying to market to existing Macintosh users. Those users are accustomed to Apple's ease of use. I tried Yellow Dog, and it was not nearly the equal of the latest x86 (RedHat or Mandrake) installers. I can't imagine that they will persuade many mac users to switch.

  8. Re:Why? by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It's a big post, lemme see if I can cover it all.
    Maybe so, I wouldn't know. But in general, OS X supports a lot more Apple hardware than Linux. For example, XFree86 4.1 is still unaccelerated for a lot of video cards in Apple systems, Firewire device support in Linux is flaky, and sound doesn't work under Linux in many systems (particularly laptops).

    I disagree with this pretty strongly. Linux PPC runs on essentially any Apple PCI PowerPC machine ever made. MacOS X runs only on recent G3 and G4 models. It doesn't even fully support the DVD decoding hardware in older G3 laptops. It doesn't support the original PowerBook G3 at allApple's new OS doesn't support hardware they were shipping only 18 months ago. Now that's service with a smile! (Reference: System Requirements for MacOS X 10.1)

    XFree86 is accelerated for Mach 64, Rage 128, and Radeon which covers all the Macs I care about. 2d drawing, video scaling, colorspace conversion, and 3d OpenGL are all supported. Sound works on everything that OS X supports except the newest iBook.

    BS. I've got an iBook with YDL 2.0 and it doesn't even support suspend/sleep mode, nor does it dim the display. It can spin down the disk and blank the display, but that's it.

    YDL is the worst Linux PPC distribution you can buy. Get Debian/PPC and install a BenH kernel which supports power management on PowerBooks (and iMacs, Cubes, etc.) Linux powers off my PCMCIA cards when the PowerBook sleeps, where MacOS X does not. If I put my PowerBook to sleep under MacOS X 10.1, my battery will be drained by morning. With Linux it sleeps as long as MacOS 9 does.

    BS again. I just watched a DVD on my TV this past weekend driven by the AV connector on my iBook, in OS 10.1. Further, I'd like to know what version of Linux for PPC supports video out on my iBook.

    Well that's great for the iBook, but on the PowerBook neither the TV nor the external monitor can play movies, and you also can't play movies on the LCD with a TV or monitor attached. Linux does this just fine. I use VideoLAN which has Altivec acceleration, and incidentally also has an embryonic MacOS X port. Read the Apple Technical Note 60895 "DVD Player 3.0 Does Not Work With External Monitor Connected to PowerBook"

    Like what? Are you going to provide any examples, or are you just making stuff up?

    Hear me now or hear me later: OS X is *loaded* with local root exploits. Here's one article.

    5. How about timely support for future hardware you're likely to buy?

    How about support for hardware I just bought a few months ago? Oh wait, that might cut into Steve's personal slush fund.