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Red Hat To Support PowerPC, AltiVec
Steve Cowan writes "According to an article at MacCentral, Red Hat has announced that they will produce a GNUPro toolchain and cross compiler for AltiVec-enabled PowerPC processors (such as that found in the Power Mac G4).
It will be interesting to see just what kind of performance gains this will bring, because many believe that the full potential of AltiVec is far from tapped."
With Apple going down the OS X road, is there much need or call for RedHat? Oh sure there will be the minority who will want to try it out. But doesn't OS X meet those Linuxy needs?
I've always wondered how far the G4 could be pushed. =] Can't wait to have Redhat for the G4. There's half a dozen tests I want to run and having the same "flavor" of Linux on both machines makes it more accurate. I guess I could use "everything-drake" or SuSE or whatnot, but I am quite partial to RedHat.
Now... Decisions.. Decisions. What tests should I run? I wonder what they'll show. Oh the excitement. *Grin*
-Sara
The real worth here lies in the fact that MacOS X is, let's not forget, essentially a UN*X platform. If RH play their cards right on this one, we should start seeing GNU tools perceived as a technical leader where in the past they've been perceived as something more like a reliable least common denominator.
Free software has to grow. It still needs to prove itself to make that happen. It's good to see RH concentrating on something genuinely forward-looking.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Slashdot has reported on Linux And The PowerPC before.
Not like Photoshop, much less Photoshop plug-ins run under linux. (For those that are humor-impaired, this is a crack aimed at the oft quoted G4 is faster than x86 at Photoshop claim)
TODO: Something witty here...
Last time my Mac-lover best mate tried Linux the poor quality and performance of Linux PPC ports frustrated him. I pointed out that it's catch-22, having lots of fanatical MacOS users means very few try other operating systems, which means there's little incentive for linux companies to make decent ports and so on.
Problems were really apparent - for instance he tried a distro that was for PPC, but it had no Mac customisations what so ever. It just assumed he was using a 3 button mouse for instance. Hopefully if Red Hat do this properly, rather than just use a fancy compiler, OS X will have some competition on its home ground.
What effect will this have on LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog?? Will RedHat 'steal' their business?
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
As to the question of "what will this bring since altivec is underused/underappreciated?" the answer is simple: nothing.
The same problem remains: if you want to optimize your algorithm using Altivec, you still have to jump through some hoops. GCC isn't magically going to detect that your for loop could be done 400 times faster using Altivec: you'll need to tell it.
In short, you can do everything you need to already using the existing tools from here.
Just-another-tool does not news make.
Apple's toolchain on OSX is gcc already, and they've (supposedly) submitted a bunch of compiler optimizations back to the gcc group, and I'm sure IBM's mainframe linux guys have submitted a bunch as well. So is RedHat doing more development? Or just putting out a press release about all these wonderful things they didn't do?
PPC is what is used in IBM's RS/6000's. I wonder if this an attempt to undercut AIX with a competitive compiler. Having said that I wonder what IBM is doing along these lines (if anything) for a chip they principly designed and still use in their servers
This post was made by I, Mojo Trolljo, for you to read that was written by I who is Mojo Trolljo!
BTW, GCC and binutils already support the AltiVec, including the C extensions.
So Altivec only does integer operations?
I wonder if Apple could technically make it illegal to install anotehr OS on your nice, shiny new Mac? I mean, everone else in the world seems to think it is illegal to use other software (Sony, Nintendo, etc) for personal use. Just a thought.
The arena that this is being overlooked in is the embedded software community. Currently, to use the AltiVec instructions, I believe you are locked into using operating systems such as WindRiver's VxWorks. This will not make such a big effect on the mac community, since as previously pointed out, most of the Mac users are fanatics and not likely to change. However, there are an immmense number of PPC based embedded systems out there that could benefit from this, not only performance wise, but also not having to pay X thousands of dollars for each license of VxWorks. I for one can't wait to see how this works out.
IIRC, Apple (perhaps with motorola), has already put all kinds of AltiVec stuff into GCC for use as the OSX system compiler. Apple has been working on their own GCC tree, but has always been feeding some stuff back up to the GCC maintainers.
Isn't this just some marketing hype for RedHat (nee cygnus) just taking the patches already incorporated into Apple's GCC, and putting them into their commercial GCC release?
I don't know how GCC compares to Metrowerks' Compiler, or what Apple is using for different parts of their code (I dunno if MW does OBJ-C, so Apple would likely use GCC at least for that).
I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to look at the binaries and see what they're using.
-SteveK
Don't get me wrong, it's great to see Linux able to take advantage of AltiVec. You can deride graphics as "fluff", but the fact is it's a very important area for free software to be competing in. I shouldn't have sounded like I was downplaying the importance of that.
However: How many PowerPC boxes are running Linux, and how many are running OS X? And which is a more high-profile market?
Linux, furthermore, is a "market" that GCC already owns. I know, I know, you can retarget from wherever, but making GCC a viable, and in some senses technically superior, choice for OS X development can only be a good thing. Can you compile Carbon apps w/ GCC? I have no idea, but if not, in eight months you will.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
it might be fast etc
but apple hardware is very expensive as compared to intel. and you buy it with the software (osx) included.
maybe i missed that somewhere cheap clones can be found, but i never saw any of these. maybe some mac-fan can shed light on this?
My guess is that they're doing this for embedded applications. Remember that Red Hat does a fair amount of business in the embedded arena, and PowerPC processors are pretty big in embedded applications. So while their work on the compilers will benefit everyone, including people running Linux on their Macs, this doesn't mean you're going to see a PowerPC version of Red Hat Linux any time soon.
314-15-9265
If Red Hat manages to develop a really good implementation of their AltiVec libraries, it could have rather far-reaching effects in the advancement of Linux onto the desktop. For example, in the current Macintosh community, a staple of the software collection is Adobe Photoshop. There is a good relationship between Mac users and the program, as well as what seems to be a good relationship between Adobe and Apple. This relationship can be seen when one takes into consideration the fact that Photoshop always runs faster on Mac hardware than on PC (that's why the Apple demos are always focused around Photoshop), and the new versions always come out for Mac first.
If Red Hat can build a version of Linux specifically designed to run on a G4-powered AltiVec machine, and do at least as good a job of it as Apple has done with OS X, Adobe may well port Photoshop to that version of Linux. And if the users can get their Photoshop needs fulfilled, they may not necessarily care what OS they are running, and (let's presume that they are at work), if they can get Photoshop to run faster with this newfangled thing called "Red Hat," they may just give it a shot. This will lead to people learning Linux and possibly use it at home.
And, if Adobe does port Photoshop to AltiVec Red Hat, that is just a couple of steps away from porting it to Linux in general, which would of course be a bonus to the community as a whole. The Gimp may be acceptable, it may even be good, but it is no Photoshop.
Of course, this is only one example, and many other good things may well come of this.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Considering they support Virtual PC (the ability to run Windows on a PPC via emulation) and mklinux (for a time), I doubt they would care. Heck, apple would probably sell all their machines with ProDos on them if it sold more hardware. Risking -1 redundant: apple is a hardware company. You can do whatever you want software wise as long as you buy the hardware.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
RedHat nearly entered the PPC Distro world years ago, and backed off. IIRC, this turned into LinuxPPC after they left their work.
This article is not saying anything about a RH distro on PPC, but merely "will produce a GNUPro Linux toolchain and cross compiler for Motorola's AltiVec-enabled PowerPC processors".
While this could produce better PPC distros, it is not an announcement of an impending RedHat for Macintosh. It wouldn't surprise me if they're targeting RS/6000 boxes or embedded markets with this.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Compilers can typically do a pretty good job on sequential machines, but there is still a long way to go for getting good parallel code. Hand coding things is still the way to go for maximum performance.
That being said, the compiler can probably use it some, and having a resource available is typically better than not having the resource at all.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
The RS/6000's use the PPC 604 chip, if memory serves correctly, which has no AltiVec unit. There would probably be no performance gain over the AIX compiler that was built specifically for that chip.
Karma: Ran over your dogma.
Err... MacOS X has built-in support for multi-button mice.
MacOS 9 can do it with a number of different drivers.
Apple doesn't sell Macs with two-button mice because the focus group testing they did for Lisa development was conducted when few people outside of places like Xerox were using mice. When they tried to teach people to use two-button mice they kept asking "which button do I press" and looking at the mouse. The testers using single-button mice benefited from the easier learning curve.
The end result: one-button mice are easier for newbies. If you're not a newbie, but a two- (in my case 4- w/ a wheel) button mouse.
t'nera semordnilap
So RedHat gives 64-bit Alpha (one of the best if not one of the most affordable 64-bit platforms) and UltraSPARC tacit lukewarm support and then announces a toolkit for 32-bit PPC (and specifically AltiVec G4 Apple Macintoshes)?
It certainly is a race to the bottom.
PA
So, how long before someone sues Apple for forcing people to buy OS-X with their Mac hardware. Is it really that much different then M$? Or are they worse. I mean, I can build an x86 system without M$ OSes. I cant do the same with a Mac
Linux for PS2...what about the GameCube? C'mon! Is there a site with ANY GC info?
I think some people are missing the point here. It's not RH on a Mac, it's RH on a G4. The difference is that this could mean a new market for Motorola...i.e. make a G4-based system that isn't a Mac. Not saying they'd exclude the Mac, just saying they're not limiting themselves. Moto really needs this because the G4 just doesn't have the huge market that the x86 processors hold (so, less R&D money for Moto compared to say Intel or even AMD). Apple killed off clones and other competition (e.g. WinNT on PowerPC), and therefore hurt the development of the PPC (lower sales volume, lower revenue). Personally, I already run RH 7.2 for my mail server (Athlon-based) and I'd love to run it as a second OS on my dual-800. Even more interesting/desirable would be a new G4 system that I could put together (wow, actually buy a PPC motherboard at a decent price?!?!?!) and make it my new mail/web/DNS/render farm/samba server....yummy..
Some have said they would love to see a RH distro. Seems more linux distros for PPC are RH derivitives (Linuxppc, Yellow Dog, Mandrake, etc.) but there are alternatives too (Suse, Debian, etc.) and of course the BSDs. :)
You can find out more about Altivec here. Support by Redhat has been talked about before on the mailing list, with some RH developers jumping in at points.
Altivec does short parallel vector crunching by adding some 128bit registers for you to play with and SIMD operations to crunch a bunch of numbers in them. Where I work we use Altivec to optimize matrix operations and it does its job well. Neat stuff, even though I'm not an assembly man myself.
Sorry, Apple Macs will have no effect on IBM's RS6k market.
RS6k users want ECC-protected cache and main memory; Apple Macs don't have this.
RS6K users want large 128-bit+ memory paths. Apple Macs still have a 64-bit memory path, much like their PC bretheren.
RS6k users often require standard RS232 ports (for terminals and measuring instruments). Again, Apple Macs don't have serial ports.
RS6k users demand rock-solid reliability. Currently supervising the deployment of 26 Quicksilver G4 Macs, I note that five were DOA. One required a subsequent logic board replacement a week later.
Our last G4 Mac deployment (25 400Mhz blue/white) resulted in four DOA, all with logic board failures.
Sorry, the much-exalted reliability of Apple Macintosh is really a myth - they're really no better than a typical x86 PC and certainly not anywhere near that of RS6k. The price should be a sure indicator :-P
PA
will there be some way to take this new support by redhat and use it on server/ high performance multiple processor boards? I want a Quad G4.Is this possible? would I have to rip the ROMS off another G4 board?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I'm old school Mac. I've been using them for a long time (not nearly as long as some though). I love the Mac GUI. It's consistent and fits my graphical needs. I love the useability of Linux and the power it affords. Not to brag but I'm a fair admin of redhat-styled Linux boxes. I pride myself on my security while still being usable. I know both very well. That's why I always use a Mac and Linux box in pairs. The Mac is my GUI and that box has 3-4 terms open on the Linux box (or VNC). I integrate both. OS X is neither. I can't call it a Mac OS because it's just so damned funky. They had a great GUI and had to go and change it. For someone just starting out on Macs or not that familar with one, this is probably not a big deal to you. For someone like myself, it's a damned nightmare. The *nix underpinnings really aren't like any *nix I'm used to. Not Solaris, Linux, IRIX, or any of the BSDs I've played around on. It just isn't the same thing. The learning curve for a person in my position is incredibly steep. Now the OS kicks ass, don't get me wrong. It's amazing how good it is for the first (major) release of a completely new OS. I can't wait until the next major revision though. Maybe 10.5 or something similar. They are bound to fix the quirks that hurt most of us. They're bound to make it even better. Maybe then I can justify forcing it on myself. For now I only run it on my network sniffing box. Until it gets better, I'll stick with 9.2.2 and my Linux terms.
Back in my grad school days, one of my coworkers found a serious bug in our new RS6Ks. IBM had a *team* of engineers working on fixing that bug as soon as they verified it wasn't headspace+timing on our part. (We actually didn't have a 5 9's requirement for uptime or anything, but the bug could have affected people who did.)
Apple isn't set up to do support at that level- they sell to general consumers, not folks for whom 10 minutes of downtime is a deal-killer.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
-- Find the Truth...
Some use IBM's POWER cpu....some use PPC....
Pathetic. If this gets in the troll library, it simply proves that the process for getting something approved needs to be worked on.
Further, your arguments make you sound like a four year old. If you don't want to post here, I sure as hell won't stop you from leaving, but don't try to imagine yourself as leading the revolution out of slashdot.
Here's the deal. There will be a slightly larger ad on top of the page, because otherwise, there would be no advertisers. Because Rob wanted to give you an option not to see these ads, he was nice enough to start a subscription system.
Giving enough of a rat's ass about your karma that you consider others obliged when you waste it simply proves that you need to relax. By all means, make good on your threat to no longer post, and go outside.
Having someone take ownership of an Altivec-aware toolchain is fantastic. Thank you, Redhat. The community, especially those of us who use Linux on PPC systems, thank you.
Now, as far as the untapped power of Altivec, here's the slightly off-topic problem.
To write Altivec code, you need a toolchain of compilers and linkers that understand Altivec. Those compilers won't change your code to use Altivec, but will permit you to do so. This is not a trivial matter to say the list, mostly because the Altivec ABI is difficult to maintain in a compiler because, for instance, it defines vector types.
The only thing that will truly tap the power of Altivec is auto-vectorization, eg. you write slow, unoptimized code with no knowledge of Altivec, and the compiler does it for you. This, as compiler writers know, is the holy grail of vector compilers. Apple implemented some auto-vectorization in its gcc, which required calls across the front-end/back-end boundary, which obviously can't be accepted outright into the FSF tree, hence the lack of good Altivec support in gcc for Linux.
The real issue is that even if you can write good code to make gcc autovectorize for this specific rev of Altivec, its an even less pleasant task to abstract that away so that you can have some starting place for autovectorizing on other platforms (MMX and whatever its called today, 3DNow!, etc.) or the next generation of Altivec.
If Redhat puts even a little development effort into that effort, the benefit to the open software community as a whole would be amazing.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
I dunno, check out the Altivec Forum and the Scitech List, people writing in C seeing large performance improvements.
From what I understand, the RC-5 and SETI apps are C with pre-compiler directives. The RC-5 G4 client blows throws keys 16 times faster than a same-speed P4.
Lies about crimes
Also, the Power4 is a 64bit chip, and the G4 is still 32bit.
Define "bit." The G4 has AltiVec, a SIMD instruction set that works on 128-bit vectors. (Yes, I know the Power4 has multiple CPUs on-die, but it's out of the price range for CPUs used in typical consumer workstations.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Apple is has its own compiler group. That I am sure contributes back to the gcc tree, since most of Apple's development tools are based on GNU technologies. That being said:
Doesn't that mean that Red Hat is going to focus a few more developers on gcc for G4/altivec chips? In addition to what Apple all ready has. A big deal, but not THAT big of deal.
I need to be able to run it headless, without a GUI, or replace/upgrade the GUI to fit my needs or fix it as needed without rebooting. OS X doesn't give me these things (yet).
So use the Darwin operating system. It's the core of Mac OS X (kernel plus command line tools) minus the GUI. Throw X11 on top of Darwin and install a free GUI. Be happy.
I can't call [Mac OS X] a Mac OS because it's just so damned funky.
I thought "funky" was a compliment.
The *nix underpinnings really aren't like any *nix I'm used to.
Think of GNU-Darwin as BSD mixed with Linux mixed with some unique stuff. You'll get used to it, just as you got used to the other six *n?x flavors you mentioned (Solaris, Linux, IRIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD).
Will I retire or break 10K?
That is exactly why corps. pay huge dollars for mainframes.
You have not expercied technical support until you call up a vendor with a problem, and that same day someone is on site, and fixing the problem.
and its not lets try this, ok lets try this, BS its, that part seems to be failing? replace it now, NQA.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you like bits so much, please note that Altivec is 128 bits.
Lies about crimes
No, what s/he's saying is that newbies don't use or need contextual menus. On the mac, all of the options for which you would need a contextual menu in the finder are contained in drop-downs. With your browser, the contextual menus can be accessed by just holding down the button for a few seconds.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
A couple of years back, IBM told everyone it had no interest in licensing or implementing the AltiVec instruction set. So this only affects Moto chips, and has no effect whatsoever on IBM hardware.
yerricde has answered this question here, in a forum where it is more on-topic.
We do some heavy matrix FP computations in our software and looked at various options. IN THEORY optimisation to certain processors should bring speed improvements. However, is it really worthwhile to throw a few programmers at it to really squeeze the last bit out of it while processors get faster by the day ?
I have never heard a customer complain about speed - I assume that they blame any speed deficiencies on their hardware. So where is the problem - and incentive for us to improve speed ?
I'm frantically searching for a page I remember seeing on one of the apple rumor sites saying that OS X 10.2 was going to have a 10% across-the-board speed increase due to Apple's custom improvements to the GCC compiler for PPC...
Anyone know where this link is or more about this?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Isn't this part of the IBM deal announced late last year?
Red Hat Press Release
The above link details Red Hat's commitment to provide solutions to all of IBM's server lines, including the pSeries (PowerPC machines that normally run AIX).
Our last G4 Mac deployment (25 400Mhz blue/white)...
You know I think I have an idea why your Blue and White G4s were DOA: Apple never made Blue and White G4s, so you must be some incredible idiot who got ripped off by someone looking to make a buck by selling G3s to people dumb enough to not know the difference.
RTFA. Not a distro for PPC. A compiler, and an update at that. Maybe it means a distro in the future, but that is pure speculation.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I need a box that's garunteed to run for long periods of time (2+ years) as a rock solid and stable system. I need to be able to run it headless, without a GUI,
Well, the B&W G3 that I rack mounted at AboveNet running 10.0.1 has been up for 314 days now...
-pmb
The G3/G4, Power4 etc. belong to the PowerPC (PPC) family of CPUs. Of course, we all know this.
However, few participating in the discussion seem to acknowledge, that there is more systems running PPC than Apple's Macs.
PPC is important in the embedded market. It has a high performance, stays relatively cool There are 'computers on a card' (a PCI card with a G3/G4 on it plus memory). They communicate over TCP/IP (or proprietary protocols) over the PCI bus with the host system. Nice if you want to have a mini cluster, a physical firewall, or whatever...
Then we have several (Micro)ATX mobos, some even for dual G4 (SMP). They get used mostly in the industry, however, this year will see two new home/office-desktop G3/G4 systems that have nothing in common with Apple. See here:
So it is obvious that RedHat, being focussed more on industry/server markets than on hte Desktop (that is their current goal as far as I am informed) has some interest in supporting PPC development. Altivec is a very good instruction set and having optimizations for it will be a great benefit. Altivec is not only for MultiMedia, btw. !
Theoretically, all these systems could run LinuxPPC !
Personally I am happy to see some major resource supporting the PowerPC since I would prefer a PPC machine far more than the archaical, outlived, patched & hacked i86 platform (can you use all your PCI slots without clashes...? I can't and my MoBo is from April last year...) Also the PPCs keep quite cool, meaning one could live without an active fan, unlike the Athlon hair-driers...;-)
For the enhusiasts: There are at least two other desktop (!) OS in the works, which are PPC native and come with SMP support: MorphOS (in the works since three years or more) and AmigaOS4.x
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
Amen. Yes, IBM support contracts cost a bunch. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing where "we've crashed once" means "developer is calling you back within the hour, even if it's 3AM", and "we've crashed twice" means "two developers is on the phone to you, and another two are on their way to the airport..."
:)
The hardware side is even more amazing - the support processor will phone home and ask for a CE to be dispatched along with relevant parts, to replace things showing a tendency to fail. So your first sign of problem is the guy showing up with parts.
And if you thought hot-swappable disk drives were cool, try hot-swapping a memory or CPU card.
Replying to myself, doh ! ;-)
I just checked out the press-release. It is definatly with the embedded market in view:
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
Forgot to respond to the *nix underpinnings response. Yeah the tools a pretty much the same. All, well, most of the basics are there. The rest have probably been ported or are packaged up by someone else. The directory structure is very much different. That's part of the problem for me. I have trouble going from one to the next quickly. For example, I consult at a number of different places. Many of these places just want a web server w/ administration. Easy. Of the course of a couple years I've changed my directory structure a bit. When I go from one client's system to the next, I always have to stop and relearn the different structure. It does matter and it's a pain when you think it should be there but it's not and you have to stop and think about what OS you're on. D'oh!
Well, Apple has hacked on gcc a bit. Looks like the changes aren't exactly cutting edge; they appear to be from nearly two years ago. Not sure how that makes Red Hat on G4 a shoe-in, and I'm sure there's more work to be done. Here's the horse's mouth, so to speak:
s s_motorola.html) seems to suggest this. Guess my iBook will have to learn to live with Yellow Dog after all.
http://altivec.org/tools/freeware.cfm#apple
Some quotes:
> Apple's Patches
> These patches where collected and provided by Sam
> Figueroa at Apple. This patch set contains all of
> Apple's AltiVec-related changes to gcc-2.95.2. It is
> designed to be applied onto the official FSF
> distribution of gcc 2.95.2 with no other patches except
> for Motorola's AltiVec patches as of Feb. 2000 (In other
> words, the patches attached are relative to Motorola's
> patches). The attached patches have not been tested, so
> use at your own risk.
My questions is whether this RedHat announcement is only for AltiVec enabled processors. The RedHat news release (http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2002/pre
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I have no idea.
If you like bits so much, please note that Altivec is 128 bits.
But the G4 core is still 32-bit.
PA
I really appreciate RedHats efforts to bring GCC to the PPC/AltiVec family, but definitely not for the alleged performance it will bring. As much as it hurts all the OSS zealots, GCC is NOT the compiler to turn to if you want high-performance code.
Has never been. Look at GCC output on most platforms, and you'll be astounded HOW bad code can get. Sorry, but GCCs forte is being cross-platform; And that makes it REALLY hard to squeeze out the last bit of performance.
But still, three cheers to RedHat!
How about using a few of those 64 general purpose/floating point registers first instead of making so many trips to memory? I am by no means a PPC asm guru, but I managed to make about half as many trips to RAM in a Short to Float conversion function.
gcc is not a speed optimized compiler. It's optimized for portability. So it runs on many many platforms, but many many other compilers can write faster code.
i am no trying to be serious or revolutionary... i am just trying to crap flood. christ take a chill dude
"apple is a hardware company. You can do whatever you want software wise as long as you buy the hardware."
That's partly true, but I won't say completely. Otherwise, Apple would have supported Linux on PowerPC many years ago. This, however, was not the case even though the community would develope the software freely. In the beginning, they supported LinuxPPC. Soon after, they withdrew support. Then again, maybe it was because they planned on coming up with MacOS X. But then again, that would only go to show that they do indeed have software interests.
www.yellowdoglinux.com
Why force an Apple product into a mold that Linux already fits into?
Because the Apple software is more likely to have higher quality on Apple hardware. On the other hand, Linus concentrates on making Linux the best UNIX-clone kernel for x86 machines and has even rejected some patches that fix a kernel panic on Alpha because he was too busy to consider patches that didn't directly improve the x86 version. (I can't find the link; can anybody else help?)
Will I retire or break 10K?
Apple Laptop Keyboards are Unacceptable to Unix Users
Apple designs horrible keyboards. ADB keyboards (which are still used on all of Apple's laptops) are unusable to unix users who need a Ctrl key to the left of the 'A'.
Proper Keyboard Design
- When a key is pressed, the keyboard sends a keyPress
event.
- When a key is released, the keyboard sends a keyRelease
event.
- Each key is assigned a different keycode.
Nothing more, nothing less.ADB Keyboard Mis-design
- When the key to the left of the 'A' (CapsLock) is
pressed, the ADB keyboard sends both a keyPress event
and a keyRelease event.
- When the CapsLock key is then released, the ADB keyboard
sends NO events.
- When the CapsLock key is next pressed, the ADB keyboard
sends NO events.
- When the CapsLock key is then released, the ADB keyboard
sends both a keyPress event and a keyRelease
event.
- The above cycle repeats over and over.
This is WRONG ! Apple's ADB keyboards are broken by design.Unix Users Cannot Use Apple's ADB Keyboards
What this means is that unix users who need the key to the left of the 'A' to be a Ctrl key cannot use Apple ADB keyboards. You can easily reprogram the CapsLock key to be a Ctrl key and get rid of the badness of the CapsLock key, but you can't get the required goodness of the Ctrl key to the left of the 'A'.
Apple Loses Sales to Unix Users
All Apple laptops have the horrible broken-by-design ADB keyboards which are unusable to unix users. I want to buy an Apple laptop, but I cannot and will not until Apple builds input devices usable by unix users.
Funny how whenever anyone mentions Motorola, or AltiVec... it's suddenly a fantastic Apple innovation. IMHO this is akin to Microsoft or it's fans claiming innovation for it's "embrace and extend" tactics.
AltiVec is just some nifty CPU optimization on the G4... it's not a desktop cold fusion device folks. I'll be impressed when a G4 chip doesn't cost 4 times as much as a Pentium or AMD chip. Get over it.
If you read the article, it says nada about Apple... this is a cross compiler for embedded linux systems running Motorola G4 processors.
The article DOES NOT say that RedHat is releasing a Linux distribution for Apple G4's, which about 90% of the posts here seem to imply.
As usual... read the article first... THEN post.
-dc
A Google search for total bullshit resulted in about 87,000 results, thus proving that using the amount of Google hits to prove just about anything is, well, total bullshit.
The winners:
The losers:
As far as the Mac community goes, Linux is a solution in search of a problem. Yeah, you can turn older Macs (that can't run OS X, for example) into servers with it, and you can certainly increase ROI that way on old hardware as well, this really isn't that much of an issue in the Mac world. Not much of a business case, anyway.
".sig,
"The German tech bible has put the latest dual G4s through the SPEC CPU2000 processor benchmark, and the results make dismal reading for hardcore Apple loyalists. C't found that the RISC-based machines running , being bested in the floating point tests by an eighteen month old Pentium III-based machine."
m l
Read more at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/24358.ht
Will be true by next year sadly.
http://saveie6.com/
If [ sizeof(int *) ] returns '4' you are using a 32-bit memory model
Defining the "bitness" of a processor this way has its flaws too. Are you claiming that the 6502 (NES and C=64 chip) was a 16-bit processor and that the 8086 was 32-bit when running "large" model DOS apps?
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is interesting simply because of the rack space 1u PowerPC units that are starting to appear..
Couple this with one of the PowerPC chip patent holder moving break neck speed towards Linux and RedHat(IBM) and you have a real good chance that you will see PowerPC servers from IBM released next year running Redhat linux..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Redhat able to do this because of the work Apple has done with Darwin?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
how the fuck can my comment be overrated when it's not even been rated yet?
/. :-[
:-|
the pricy hardware apple supplies, and the binding of their OS to the hardware is a very legitimite reason to stick to pc hardware. and yes, apple hardware does cost more, at least where i live (netherlands). we complain all the time about the oem versions of windows that you're forced to buy with a new pc, but when i make a similar remark about macos, it's all of the sudden overrated?
i was asking questions, because i was not sure about the availability of powerpc *clones* that would be & cheaper & sold without the mac-os.
how the fuck can a comment which is informative, and stimulates discussion by asking opinions be overrated. well probably a critical note doesn't align with reigning opinions on
now mod me into oblivion because this will probable be seen as flamebait/OT or something. see if i care
Not terribly enlightening, really. Reading on:
So... is there anything there that's not GPL? I'm not familiar with Insight or Source-Navigator, but they don't sound compelling. What exactly is Red Hat going to be adding? All I'm seeing is marketing speak.
BTW, to all the clueless posters in this thread: GCC is the compiler for Mac OS X as well as Linux. This has nothing (specifically) to do with Linux. I can't tell what it does have to do with, but I know it's not that.
*Sigh* Yes, but we're talking about Altivec.
Lies about crimes
7.2 still installs 20+ default services even in their "desktop" installation mode, with things like NFS, named, you name it...
I suppose Linux developers might have a look at the Darwin core, but there are already a large number of Linux distros for PPC that are based on Red Hat. It was just a matter of time before Red Hat adopted their work.
-- thinkyhead software and media