Review: Yellow Dog Linux 2.2

fabiolrs writes: "imaclinux.net is running a review on Yellow Dog Linux 2.2. They could manage to run it on the iBook. YDG 2.2 is a great distro with KDE 2.2.2, Gnome 1.4, kernel 2.4.18 and Xfree86 4.2.0." Nice to see PPC systems (meaning "Apple," mostly) getting so much attention in the Linux world lately -- Mandrake's 8.2 PPC is also getting close to a release.

Comments

i was wrong

[fabiolrs]

sorry people! my fault! yellow dog linux 2.2 actually RUNS on an ibook!

Past YDL releases were good too

[NewbieSpaz]

I managed to get YDL 2.0 running on my old Apple clone - A Power Computing Power Tower 220e. I have a G3 upgrade card in it, and it works well. I can't wait to try 2.2, hopefully it will be even better at supporting the weird clone hardware. I should download it soon...
YDL's RPMs make it easy for anyone who's familiar with Redhat or Mandrake to get YDL running on a PPC. Woohoo!

i wouldn't call it great..

[Anonymous Coward]

bug ridden (take a look at their yup, update program for example, core software for the distro and it doesn't work right), difficult to install and very poor support is more like it. take a look at the ydl mailing list for lots of complaints. in addition the company has a pretty lousy policy of releasing iso images months after it's available in stores (to get people to buy it). i miss linuxppc, that was a good distro. fortunately debian, suse and mandrake are available.

posted anonymously so i don't get my butt sued .

Re:i wouldn't call it great..

[SerpentMage]

Sorry I cannot agree with that. I like YDL because they are the only ones trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. Look at Suse and Mandrake and there is no effort whatsoever.

I use YDL 2.1 with Natilaus installed and have say it is totally cool. Have not looked back.

Anyone know of a good faq

[BiggestPOS]

That has to do with dual-booting Yellow Dog Linux and OS X? just asking.

Re:Anyone know of a good faq

[woggo]

check out this on OpenFirmware and this on partitioning your Mac.

Debian & iBook

[Leone]

I have used Mandrake on x86 for several years, but two weeks ago I bought myself an iBook (my old Toshiba fell on the floor, RIP) and decided to go with Debian Woody PPC.

To my great surprise it went mostly smooth. I downloaded a minimal CD image and got up and running from there. apt-get install really is as cool as they say ;)

My biggest problem was that by default I had kernel 2.2 something and PMU (APM for Mac) crashed and burned. 2.4 fixed that though.

I really can't say that PPC is so mega-cool, but walking around with an Apple laptop (very rare) with Linux installed (almost as rare) is very geeky ;)

Link to YDL

[george399]

Why is there no link to YDL itself , but instead there is actually a link to Mandrake in the main story?

Also..

[transient]

meaning "Apple," mostly

Terrasoft makes some nice PPC hardware in addition to their distro.

No ISO? No go.

[greygent]

I'd try Yellow Dog on my TiBook, but they appear to be one of those companies who don't release ISO's to their distribution until they're virtually obsolete.

It's their right, but not a very good practice to try and win over new customers who don't want to spend $$$ to test out a new distribution.

Thankfully, I was able to get Debian installed. Now only if I could figure out how to boot it properly from OpenFirmware. The steps in the recent O'reilly article didn't work for me.

Re:No ISO? No go.

[Jupiter9]

Don't you people read?
The Yellowdog Linux website says the iso will be distributed on the 8th of April. That's four days from now.

Re:No ISO? No go.

[_typo]

Thankfully, I was able to get Debian installed. Now only if I could figure out how to boot it properly from OpenFirmware. The steps in the recent O'reilly article didn't work for me.

Branden Robinson (the debian XFree maintainer) has a page about that kind of stuff.

Re:I don't get it

[2nd Post!]

Not to be mean, but how about Macs without OS X support?

To be fair, it seems weird for the developers to be playing with *modern* Macs, instead of 6 year old Macs, but hey, the new iBook is cool.

Why?

[Moridineas]

I really don't get the appeal of Linux on Mac (or PPC more generally). Sure, I can understand running linux on older macs, but for any OSX capable computer, what's the point? I can't think of anything you can do in linux but can't do in OSX, and MANY things you cannot.

Re:Why?

[IamTheRealMike]

I can't think of anything you can do in linux but can't do in OSX, and MANY things you cannot.

Use Linux?

Look, you may think OS X is the perfect OS and given a free copy the whole world would instantly convert, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to break it to you - that wouldn't happen. There'd be people who would tell you to get lost

I'd do it for personal beliefs (more below). Others don't like Aqua, don't like the Apple way. Whatever.

I, personally, believe the OS should be open. The OS together with the hardware are absolutely key to computing. Everything else revolves around them, which is why I believe they should be open. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no zealot, I don't give a monkeys ass about the applications on top. That can be as closed or as open as you like, suits me fine either way. I don't mind paying for software. But if one organisation controls the OS then you're heading for trouble, I mean look at Microsoft. I don't believe Apple would be any different in their shoes. And worse, Apple control the hardware too!

Once again, don't get me wrong. Apple produce lovely hardware, and lovely software. I'm willing to pay for those things, but only if I know they are open. Macs aren't standard hardware, though they are getting that way, they basically are made up of components that are standardised throughout the world. And OS X is like the Mac itself, sorta open.

But for me, sorta open isn't good enough. I think the OS should be like the web - governed but not chained to a neutral independant standards organisation like the W3C. Nothing like that exists .... yet

O'Reilly article

[wiredog]

On Debian & iBook

I use a PowerPC

[SerpentMage]

I use my Powerbook and have to say that yes it is nice, but no it is not nice.

It is nice in the sense that the notebook works well. But it is a major headache to get software to work.

While some folks may say, it is LINUX and therefore it will work, that is a figment of the imagination.

Firstly when using closed software people only say Linux. When I mention PowerPC they say no problem if it is Linux it works. But then I mention it is not Intel and they say "oh, sorry, but it works on Intel".

Secondly when using open source many people do not setup the ./configure and autoconf properly to take into account a PowerPc platform. Many times I get platform not support or it simply does not compile. Case in point, Anjuta, or PNET. Sure it could be fixed with a bunch of tweaks, but it gets my goat that I need to tweak at all!!!

The only software that has worked without problem whatsoever are the bigger projects (Apache, Perl, etc) and Java. I am amazed at how well Java moves from Windows, Linux Intel and Linux PowerPC.

My conclusion is that even Open Source and closed source are as arrogant about non-intel platforms.

Re:I use a PowerPC

[David Roundy]

You should try debian. Debian works very hard to make sure their packages work on all their platforms (which, of course, includes powerpc). This involves seeking out and fixing the endianness/signed char issues that keep packages from being portable. Eventually those patches (in theory, at least) make their way upstream.

That being said, even on debian, other architectures are in a sense second class, since most of the developers use the i386 platform. This means that packages get autobuilt more slowly on powerpc, for example, but on the whole, it's a great powerpc distro.

Debian "Sid" on an ibook...

[Scott Ransom]

I haven't tried the new Yellow Dog, but a couple weeks ago I installed Debian unstable (closely following Branden Robinson's instructions) along with Benjamin Herrenschmidts 2.4.18 kernel on my new ibook (600MHz, 384MB, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, Airport wireless) and am extremely impressed about how everything works (all except the modem - which I never use anyways). DVDs (with xine), CD burning, wireless, sound, hardware accelerated 3D, built in ethernet, power management -- all for ~$2000 US. And Linux seems way more snappy than OSX. This is my first Mac, but if they work this well with Linux in the future, it may not be my last...

My experience: great support

[Klox]

I received my YDL 2.2 CDs the same day this was last referenced on Slashdot and posted a rant about the problems I had installing it on a brand new Power Mac G4. The next day, one of their support guys e-mailed me. After a couple of e-mails, I was up and running.

I was really impressed with Terra Soft's support for scanning Slashdot for comments by little whiners like myself and actually giving me a hand. I had mad no effort to understand the problem when I posted my rant but yet this guy went out of his way to help me. I'm certainly not that forgiving to my customers, even though they've paid for my help.

After resolving my install problem, I've been very happy with the distro. I'm planning on using this for the basis for future development at my company.

Kudos to Terra Soft!

Re:Also.. I'm about to get my hands on some

[slithytove]

I should have 70 BriQs today or tommorow sans drivebay housing. I'm pretty dissapointed with the per-node pricing of Black Lab Linux (by the same folks).
I'm thinking at the moment that I'll netboot Debian and install my own clustering libraries and tools, since as far as I can tell, everything included in Black Lab is available elsewhere except their graphical cluster management tools.
Too bad they didn't see fit to GPL them and just make money on their rather expensive BriQ's (We paid $1500/per for G4s) before Black Lab was released.
Does anyone have any experience with these? Any tips?

MacOSX vs. YDL

[tqbf]

YDL is interesting because, if your day-to-day operating system is Linux, you cannot do better than a TiBook running Yellow Dog. There simply is no hardware in the X86 world that is comparable (wide screen display, slim, lightweight, with adequate processing power).

I used YDL when I first got my TiBook. I had to, because I needed 802.11 support and Apple didn't support Orinoco. I switched because I needed Firewire more than I needed Orinoco. My experiences:

YDL: Works as well as any mainstream Linux distribution. Yup works, by some definition of "works". Better still, Ximian's stuff builds from SRPMS, and Ximian now explicitly supports them with binaries. Not hard to get current, buildable kernel source, and FreeSWAN works nicely for IPsec. The (major) negative is that Firewire support blows, and it is pointless to buy hard drives that don't come in Firewire enclosures. When I left YDL, SBP2 drivers didn't work at all. The (minor) negative is that companies don't distribute closed-source binaries for YDL, and they do for X86 Linux.

OSX 10.1: A dream; xterms, xemacs, and Adobe Illustrator on the same screen. Rootless XFree86, transparent anything, beautiful user interface, antialiasing. It's faster than Linux for applications and slower for tools. The one (big) negative is that there is no credible IPsec or VPN support. A minor negative is that you can't keep current with BOTH the dev kernel AND Apple's updates.

I'm on OSX 10.1.3 now and I'm not looking back. However, I can understand why people want PPC Linux, if they already simply use Linux for everything and want good portable environments. It's good to hear that YDL continues to move forward.

why is this okay?

[jchristopher]

The article basically says that YDL 2.2 is "okay", with quite a few quirks, their configuration tools crash, etc. Why is this considered "acceptable"? Is it wrong to expect more out of what is supposedly a "maintenance release" - shouldn't they have some stuff ironed out by now?

I have $100 just waiting to be donated to the first PPC Linux team that produces something that works properly on my iBook. Seriously. No one seems to want it.

In Yellow Dog 2.1, I followed their Airport setup instructions to the letter, but it does not work. Their "YUP" update tool does not work. Sound did not work. From the way the article reads, it sounds like 2.2 is more of the same, so why bother?

I'm also following the Mandrake 8.2 PPC beta process with much interest. As far as I can tell, there is ONE GUY - Stewart - working on it. He's doing some great things, but frankly, it's clear that he's overwhelmed. For example, my iBook2 cannot get IPs via DHCP over either the built in ethernet or the wireless inteface. Nobody knows why. Modem works, but only after you tweak the timout values in the dialer to be certain values. How would anyone know that? It should be done by the installer if the installation platform is the iBook!

I wish that these folks would work on getting the CORE stuff working, and working well, before they start including 2000 packages on the CDs. I can download Apache, MySQL, and 18 text editors later - right now, I need a working network connection!

The "gold standard", as far as I'm concerned, is RedHat 7.2 on a Dell Inspiron. Everything worked, and I mean EVERYTHING. No tweaking, no kernel upgrade, no command line garbage. Ethernet, video, mouse, keyboard, everything. So that's what I expect, but no PPC vendor has delivered it yet.

Given the very limited hardware a PPC vendor must support, I just expect it to work. It doesn't.