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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."
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." --
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.
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.
From what I can tell based on the (very short) article, RedHat is *not* porting a full distro to PowerPC. They are porting an Altivec-enabled cross-compiler and something called a GNUPro Linux toolchain. (I'm not sure what the latter is, but I'm sure some other /.er can fill in the details.
At any rate, this is not really a desktop-focused announcement. It's about the embedded market. Moto wants embedded Linux to be developed for use on PPC-backed set-top boxes, Internet appliances, network appliances, etc. It may have some positive repercussions for Unix on PPC desktop as well, but since Apple is already hard at work making the gcc work well for PPC and OS X, I'm not clear on exactly what those benefits might be.
No, OS X does not meet Linuxy needs. The two systems each have their own benefits and pitfalls.
OS X is a proprietary, largely untested OS with commercial support and a large number of commercial applications coming to it in the near future. It is BSD-based. The development team focuses mostly on the GUI.
Redhat is an opensource, exellently developed and highly tested OS with a little bit less commercial support, a little bit more community support, and a smaller number of commercial applications... Though I expect that to change in the near future. It is Linux, and comes with a variety of window managers each with their own set of 'skills'.
Do what win-geeks do. Dual boot. =] You just might find that you fall madly in love with RedHat and can't think of using anything else. Or not.
I'll be seriously interested in tests/comparisions between applications running on Redhat and OS X, how they perform differently, etc.
-Sara
Agreed that it makes it more accurate, but it's still hopelessly inaccurate. Linux was written for x86 and is maintained in a x86-centric fashion (the separate ppc tree takes ages to have it's improvements folded back into the Linus tree). That's the way Linux works for a number of good reasons. What it means though is that PPC support is always lacking, not to mention support for video cards, the Mac onboard sound etc.
The problem this causes with benchmarks is that you are *not* running the same OS and the benchmarks are *not* comparable. The only way to get a good measure of how the speed of a computer is to actually sit down and use it for a while. Why are people so obsessed with benchmarks and photoshop tests?
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.
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
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
Motorola and IBM parted ways at the G4. The Power4 doesn't include AltiVec....IBM wanted to use the on-chip real estate for other things.
Also, the Power4 is a 64bit chip, and the G4 is still 32bit.
- Sig
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.
Because. They're interesting, even if they're inaccurate. It's the same thing with being interested in how different clothing impacts the speed of skaters. Different skaters will perform better with different suits, and it's wildly inaccurate but you still get some sort of an idea.
I suppose it would be more interesting to take a day or two and try out three competing OSes. Yellowdog, OS X and Redhat and see how they compare with eachother for a variety of different tasks.
I guess I'm interested in it for the same reason I'm interested in trying out different OSes in the first place. Because I'm curious.
-S
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."
And Lord knows I have, often enough. :) But seriously, it has its place, PPC is great hardware for it, and up until now Linux/PPC has been hobbled by not being able to take real advantage of that fact.
*shrug* Who cares?
This still has nothing to do with OS 10. It has to do with Linux/PPC.
I take that back, indirectly it does have a little to do with OS10. Because Mac is using that horrid slow Mach kernel, and still performing as well or better than Linux/PPC, because of better optimisation. RedHat is poised to eliminate that gap, and make Linux/PPC a much more attractive system.
From where on earth are you getting all this?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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
What you say is true, but not relevant to the conversation. The Power series of processors is a high end workstation/server processor with a big emphasis on things like database and modeling performance. Thus it needs to be a 64 bit chip in order to handle that amount of memory.
The G4 is a desktop class chip, and this means that a lot fo video work needs to be done on it (something that AltiVec works nicely with). It has no need to be 64bit at this point (wouldn't hurt necessarily, but wouldn't help). The lower power, die size, hear, and cost all are nice thing for a consumer level product.
In other words, both chips work great for their intended audiences. And the article in question is only talking about the PowerPC family, so the Power4 is not included.
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.
Open source/free software IS a benefit. It means that if I don't like it, I can change it.
In addition to that, there are other reasons some prefer Linux to MacOS X. For me, I prefer a System V style init to a BSD init (runlevels are cool). I like the GNU tools being defualt. I like the flexibility X gives me. I like compiling my kernel to MY specefications.
I've never used OS X, and have no real desire to. It's not free software, and is thus irrelevant to me. Also, can you disable the GUI in OS X so there's one less thing to go wrong when running a server? (I'm not trolling here... An honest question... I don't know this one)
The point I make is that subtle differences in software make a huge difference to people preference. Do you like OS X better than Linux? If so, great. I like Linux, and I'm 99% happy with it. The areas I'm not happy with, I do something about.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
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.
Ummm. No. OSX is really NeXTstep 6.1 with a macintosh application environment thrown in. NeXTstep is a proven stable OS that predates Linux by at least 3 years. Furthermore, the core foundation of OSX, known as Darwin is also open source.
'Darwin,' the FreeBSD-based core of OS X, is open source:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/
The interface, Aqua, isn't open-source because Apple wants to retain control of it.
I wouldn't call OS X 'largely untested.' It's directly based on NeXT's OPENSTEP operating system, which was known for being very stable and having great developer tools (the game 'Doom' was written on NeXT systems because of this), and OPENSTEP has lineage back to 4.3 BSD.
What's especially interesting is that Darwin runs on Intel PC's. This means that if Apple wanted to make Mac OS X available as an alternative to Microsoft Windows, all it would theoretically take is a recompile for the x86 architecture...
You really should give OS X a try, you might be supprised. I have a friend who for the longest time swore he would never use a commercial OS (Windows, Mac OS, BeOS etc) except in situations where there was no other alternative, however, after playing arround with OS X on my iBook for a few days he decided it might actualy be worth a shot. He now happily runs Caldera (dual boot with 98 for games) on his PC, and OS X on his (new) mac..
As for your question about the GUI, I don't know if you can diable it per se, but I do know if on the login screen you type >console (the > is nessesary) and don't use a password, it will switch to an entirely text based mode and only returns to the GUI if you log out.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Open source/free software IS a benefit. It means that if I don't like it, I can change it.
Then welcome to Darwin, the open source core of OS X. It's there even if you don't know about it. The reason you, and most people, don't know about it is because you hardly ever have to change it or recompile the kernel yourself, while for Linux machines I find tweaking the kernel to be one of the first things I do.
Also, can you disable the GUI in OS X so there's one less thing to go wrong when running a server?
You sure can. Perhaps it's your decision that OS X is irrelevant that keeps you ignorant to what it actually is and what it is able to do.
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!"
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
The problem with your argument is that Apple sells the hardware and the OS together as one unit, and they've never stopped anyone before from selling alternate OS's for Mac hardware.
Trying to go after Apple in this manner would be like trying to go after Toyota because you can't buy a Celica with a Honda Accord drivetrain.
What Micros~1 was doing was forcing third-party hardware manufacturers into anti-competitive licensing contracts. That scenario does not exist on the Mac side.
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
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
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yes, Darwin is opensource. Yes, OS X is based upon Nextstep/openstep. No, it is not as tested/tried & true as Linux. If it were, then it would work a LOT better than Linux in quite a few situations, remember it's dealing with an extremely *limited* range of hardware. It is dealing only with the line of Macintoshes that Apple has released and has control over. ie: the G3/G4 range. When this operating system encounters a standard hardware configuration and experiences a kernel panic it is NOT stable, it is NOT tested and proven. It is NOT a "version 10" operating system. Linux handles pretty much any range of hardware that I throw at it, including things that are a little more esoteric than anything I'd think of trying with OS X. OS X has required me to change my video card or take out a SCSI controller THAT SHIPPED with my original machine in order to install it.
I would, however, love it if Apple would make OS X an alternative to Windows or Linux on the x86 platform. The more choices there are, the better.
-S
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 ?
.. speed boost, faster processor with Altivec comes out .. speed boost!
It really depends on what kind of optimization this is. In theory having a compiler that produces optimised code is good no matter what, especially in the case of Altivec, because it is assumed that faster processors will also have the Altivec instruction set. It's a win win situation: optimise for Altivec
Definitely worth it I think!
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Nope, you're actually wrong. Red Hat Linux is an OS. It is an OS made up of the Linux kernel, and a mixture of GNU, Red Hat, and other OSS userland tools. SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, etc. are all also different flavors of a Linux based OS which integrate GNU, OSS and their own tools to build their own OS.
No, it also does single precision FP. 128 bit wide register.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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?
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!
While Tivo's are PPC based linux boxes, I don't believe they'll be able to take advantage of these changes.
A quick search in google resulted in this.
It reports that the tivo uses a 50mhz embedded powerpc motherboard. Dosen't sound like G4 processor to me, which I believe is when Altivec was introduced.
How is the Mac onboard sound particularly interesting? The same goes for Mac Video. The Macs are really just Kludge Klones with a PPC in place of the x86.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
err, not quite. Apple's have an Apple designed motherboard for a start and an Apple-specific sound chip. The video was previously the ATi cards which don't seem to be too popular on the Windows side and weren't well supported under Linux (worse under PPC linux) and these days are the latest nVidia cards which are too new to have great support.
Add to that the fact that Macs don't have a BIOS and instead use OpenFirmware and you start to realise how different it is to write drivers for a Mac than a PC. The final thing to consider is the one you mentioned yourself, it uses a PPC not an x86 and since all instructions go through the processor that affects everything you do with the system.
When it comes to hardware integration little differences can cause a lot of headaches.
So, what if most of us don't want to pay a premium to be dragged onto the "bleeding edge"? With x86 PCs there is enough diversity that you can pick what degree of overkill you would like.
For example, instead of being forced to buy features you're not interested in or won't use you can merely get a small simple machine packed to the gills with RAM and disk that would dramatically undercut an iMac (nevermind a real mac).
...and if you're worried about the case design, you've gone way beyond the "consumer" end user in terms of complexity.
Anything beyond keeping the system together, shielding other electronics and proper cooling is simply of no value to most consumers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'll definately give it a shot at some point. I'd like one around the house to port my apps to. (My senior project is using SDL and OpenGL, and currently compiles under three OS's I can verify. More would be cool). I will never, however, allow myself to become dependent on non-free software, even if it's of high quality, as I've heard OS X is.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
IBM has a plethora of info on the chip. The gist is it's a 50 MHz clock doubled PPC chip without Altivec.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Will be true by next year sadly.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Apple never provided Be with technical documentation. To my knowledge, Be took advantage of the fact that hardware companies like PowerComputing were given technical documentation.
Besides, you are uncritically assuming that Be is telling the truth. IMO, the collapse of the clone market left Be feeling as though their prospects on the PPC platform had significantly diminished; the jazz about "no hardware documentation" was about as convenient an excuse as any for them to abandon their largest installed base of users at the time.
However, Be's argument neglects the fact that LinuxPPC and YellowDog Linux have survived just fine since the disappearance of Mac clones, and as open source initiatives, would have provided Be with source code that they could have adapted.
Besides, it allowed them to pour all of their development resources into the x86 platform, which controls 95% of the market. Why fight Apple for the scraps of their 5% market share? Jean Louis-Gasse saw Be as a direct compeititor to Apple, going after the design and multimedia markets, but it took the death of the Mac clones to wake him up to the fact that there was far more gravy to be had on x86 than PPC.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'll venture to guess that once a market is established in a certain way, and you attempt to tamper with it in such a way that you force most of your competitors out of business, you are acting in a monopolistic fashion.
Just do everybody a favor and when you are running OS X and you find something you dislike, send Apple feedback. I've had a bunch of issues resolved after I complained about this or that and the consensus seems to be that on this round, Apple is actually listening to technical criticism.
That's true. I guess the average business end user knows a little more than I do about recompiling a kernel to enable support for serial communications and audio DMA.
However, I don't think any of those other distros included support for AltiVec.
I have a website. It's about Macs.