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Benjamin Herrenschmidt On PPC/Linux, Apple and OSS

Posted by Hemos on from the talkin'-bout-my-eople dept.

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."

3 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Question: by Exmet+Paff+Daxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    PPC/Linux seems like an ambitious and technically interesting project, no doubt. Personally, though, I don't seem to understand the purpose. MacOs X is based on BSD, so you get all the nice Unix-like server features... and a decent GUI, something that Linux has never had. Are there some other advantages of Linux/PPC that I'm missing?

    --
    If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
    1. Re:Question: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have to admit that I wonder the same thing.

      A few years ago, running Linux on a Mac made sense -- MacOS and Linux are, to say the least, very different, and there are some real advantages to running Linux (e.g. turn a Mac into a firewall, web server, etc.). Heck, long ago I used to run A/UX, and more recently Yellow Dog Linux.

      But these days, MacOS X has everything LinuxPPC has, pretty much. It's open source, BSD is at least as nice as Linux, the Mach kernel is cool, and pretty much any application for Linux will run on MacOS X. So I don't see why anyone would run LinuxPPC instead of MacOS X (or even just Darwin, if you don't like the proprietary layers on top). Admittedly the filesystem in MacOS X is arranged a little differently from a standard Linux setup, but that's hardly cause for switching operating systems.

      So I am curious -- why do people pick LinuxPPC over Darwin or MacOS X?

  2. A couple of reasons. by dmaxwell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Linux is often faster. Just like Intel Linux, it's possible to create a custom stripped down desktop with no fat. I've become accustomed to how things work on my Intel Linux machines and like having almost the same environment on my Pismo Powerbook. I also prefer the GNU utilities over the BSD ones (flame away...it's just a preference...get over it).

    OSX is also next to useless on older hardware. We use 233Mhz Beige G3 desktop as an internal server. It's running ssh, Apache-SSL, NTP, mySQL, Apache, and Netatalk. The Apache/mySQL setup powers our troubleticket/inventory system. The Netatalk/Samba combo makes files available to both Mac and Windows clients. It does all of this with very acceptable speed and reliablity. The machine has zero need for a GUI...and doesn't have one. I suppose I could use Darwin but the machine wouldn't do it's work any better and I would have to mess with fussy ports of the daemons. It has full apt-get goodness....I forgot to mention that it is dead easy to admin.

    So yeah, there are valid reasons to use Linux on PPC hardware.