Benjamin Herrenschmidt On PPC/Linux, Apple and OSS

MacBoy writes "The folks over at ResExcellence have a great interview with Benjamin Herrenschmidt, kernel guru for the PPC/Linux camp. He offers up some history of Linux on Apple and PPC hardware, and some discussion on Apple's current and past contributions to the open-source and Linux communities. He makes some interesting comparisons of Linux on PPC vs. Intel hardware, such as the ease of getting important patches into the kernel on PPC compared to Intel. It's an interesting read, especially if you are amoung the many who covet the new Dual-CPU GHz G4 Macs and want to know a little more about the PPC/Linux community."

Comments

Here is to the crazy ones

[pinkpineapple]

This is NOT a flame, I repeat, not a flame.

It take some courage and some guts to wipe out a partition where MacOS X has been pre- installed with all the bells and whistles , all the goodies and all the simplicity in terms of usage and connectivity and then install Linux PPC instead.

After shelving about one grant more to get a slower Apple system vs a Pentium or better AMD box , and then trying to make it look like a PC running Linux, you've got to admit that either these people are nuts or heroes.

And all these technies know for sure that Apple's megahertz myth is pure brainwashing for selling embedding cpu at the price of desktops don't they?

So what's left beside the look of the system when you show it to your friends? If you hide the box and let the screen show thru a hole in a cardboard, would they know that you are on a Mac? If at least Linux was easier to use on an Apple hardware than a x86 machine, I would sorta understand. But clearly we are talking about the niche of a niche market here.

The only people I think these efforts bring joy are the hackers like ben who do it for fun. Apple gets more money out of it, they sell platforms at an outrageous price and don't have to provide support for the OS. Even Paul Mackeras, the main PPC kernel maintainer is on IBM payroll and gets big bucks from the patent company to maintain the kernel on PPC.

PPA, the girl next door.