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Terra Soft Ships Macs with Linux Preinstalled

Posted by pudge on from the gimme-gimme-some-lovin dept.

dhovis writes "Do you think the Xserve is cool, but you wish it ran Linux? Well, MacCentral is reporting that Terra Soft Solutions, an Apple 'Value Added Reseller,' is now shipping Macs. They are offering several new Macs with Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled now, and are promising the Xserve will be available soon." They are currently shipping Power Mac G4s, iBooks, and iMacs, as well as AirPort cards. See the Terra Soft Store for more information.

28 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yellow Dog? by Otter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, they are Yellow Dog.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  2. I have to wonder why by jkujawa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Three years ago, this would have made sense. Apple has always made good hardware, putting good software on it makes a winning combination.

    But now? OS X is a first-rate Unix, which I'm actually much happier using as a Unix than Linux.

    1. Re:I have to wonder why by jkujawa · · Score: 5, Informative

      You have the source code for everything that makes OS X a Unix. You don't have source code for the GUI, but that's not needed for running unix apps.
      Further, any unix apps that require a GUI need X, and that can be installed independently of Aqua/Cocoa.

    2. Re:I have to wonder why by Golias · · Score: 5, Informative
      That GUI is completely lame, and other than that I don't see a single selling point for Mac OS X as a Unix.

      Here are a few:

      1. If you buy a new Mac, no matter what retailer sells it to you, it's already there.

      2. It's BSD (actually, Mach+BSD) instead of UNIX. I know this is slashdot, rah-rah Linux and all that, but you would be surprised how many UNIX geeks strongly prefer BSD over Linux when talking about free *nix platforms.

      3. OS X can run a lot of programs that will probably never, ever be ported to Linux. Programs like Photoshop, QuickTime, Quark (in a couple weeks), M$-Office, etc. In fact, with OS X, the Classic environment, the BSD layer, the built-in JVM, and a copy of VPC, you can run damn near every piece of software written in the last 10 years or so, all on the same machine. And don't tell me about open source projects that "do the same thing" as the major comercial OS X & Windows apps... GIMP ain't Photoshop, and Open Office sucks (so far).

      4. The IDE and other dev tools for OS X (all available for free) kick ass. Nobody ever took NeXT seriously as a computer company, but the one thing that everybody who used them really liked was their software development tools. OS X's Project Builder picks up where NextStep left off.

      5. The OS X community is much bigger than the LinuxPPC community (and may even be bigger than the entire desktop Linux community by now... I haven't seen any recent surveys). I personally know dozens of OS X users, while I know only one person who has even installed YDL, apart from myself. Some parts of LinuxPPC (such as how it boots) are radically different from what the Linux communtity at large is using, so the peer support network for YDL can feel very small sometimes.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    3. Re:I have to wonder why by Artifex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your reasons are pretty much exactly why I want my next computer to be a mac - and I've been running PCs for 17 years or so.

      A Mac with OSX would give me a stable OS with real apps (Photoshop, some office product) and still let me fart around with BSD pretending to know what I'm doing. I don't have to worry about "serious" apps breaking from dependencies on some package that just got updated, but I can still play around with the free stuff if I want to. Plus, I'm not a software developer, and I feel it's pointless for me to have to spend hours tweaking desktops and hardware drivers to get things useful.

      I think their engineering is solid, but I am still waiting for them to get up to speed. Macs look pretty, but a 533MHz FSB on a Pentium 4 still makes me drool. And before you complain that I'm comparing things improperly, imagine your G4 with a 533 FSB. Then there would be no doubt that it rules, right?

      --
      Get off my launchpad!
    4. Re:I have to wonder why by Xenex · · Score: 3, Informative

      "a) the no-button mouse, after using scroll mice and relying heavily on right-clicking and center-clicking for a while now, the lack of buttons is disconcerting."

      It's not a "no-button mouse", it's a one button mouse. Just because the button is built in an innovative way doesn't mean it does not exist.

      You're finding the lack of extra mouse buttons "disconcerting", are you? Then why don't you plug your fancy mouse into the Mac? OS X supports right clicking and scroll wheels straight out of the box, and Logitech, Microsoft, and Kensington all have free official OS X support software if you'd like to set 'advanced' options.

      "b) it's ugly, that's an opinion, though, and not a fact.

      Then change it.

      "c) when you close the last window to an application, the application should quit, or at least ask if you want to quit, OS X leaves it running."

      Once again, this is just your opinion. However, the OS X way really is the 'advanced users' way. OS X works around the concept that the window is not the application.

      Close the iTunes player window, the music continues and you don't have to deal with a window being open. Need access to a window again? Click it in the Dock and the window reopens. Close the XMMS (or Winamp, or whatever) window, the music stops, the app closes. If you want to get the thing out of the way, you have to minimise it, or move it out of the way.

      And, for anyone out there now thinking "Well, I do prefer the XMMS example": You can work that way in OS X as well if you'd like. You can still minimise and move windows if you'd prefer not to close them.

      Mail.app is the same. I have Mail.app running in the background, checking my e-mail every 5 minutes. Now, if your advice were to be taken, I'd have to have a Mail.app window open somewhere to do this.

      The OS X way is far more advanced, and gives more flexiblity. However, if that's to hard to grasp, just be sure to use the Application menu (it's always the one next to the Apple up the top) and choose Quit in that, or press Cmd-Q (Command is the 'Apple Key', just so you know). I assume you're capable of that.

      "d) no apparent ability for the TCP/IP stuff to autodetect traffic and, if needed, initiate a dialup connection...."

      Well, personally all my dialing is done automatically by an Airport Base Station. However, I've just had a look in System Preferences. In the Network Settings, I chose 'Internal Modem'. I then looked in the 'PPP' tab and saw this button that said 'PPP Options'. The first option in there? Connect automatically when starting TCP/IP applications.

      Now, this took me no more then 30 seconds. Perhaps you should try opening your eyes next time.

      "this is all based on very limited exposure to the system."

      What did you do, play with the operating system for 2 minutes in an Apple Store somewhere?

      Most of your 'issues' with OS X do not exist. Informed opinions really are good things to have; perhaps you should try one sometime.

    5. Re:I have to wonder why by DavidRavenMoon · · Score: 3, Informative
      Non-standard GUI? Compared to what? What the hell is a standard GUI? If anything Apple is the only company that enforces a standard, uniform interface for all applications so the user has a consistent interface. Try to say that about Linux/Unix. *laugh* Don't even mention Win32 varients.

      Exactly, and Apple had the first standard commercial GUI on the market. And all the big MS apps like Word and Excel that set standards for business were originally Mac applications.

      Motif always looked like Windows 3 (or vice versa?) and Win 95 very obviously borrowed from NeXTSTEP. Look at the window borders, the window buttons, the recycle bin, the taskbar (dock), and the Windows Explorer. All from NeXTSTEP/OPEN STEP (circa 1978).

      I think OS X turns off some people because it's pretty, and they want their GUI to look like something from a Sci-fi movie...

      I have to admit, Aqua took some getting used to, just because of all the whiteness ... but I love it now. Aesthetics do matter to some people.

      We buy cars because of the way they look, why not computers/OS's?

      --
      -- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
  3. It's a good idea, if you want to waste your Mac by krog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slam me into -1, Flamebait land if you want.

    But anyone who buys new Apple hardware and shuns Mac OS X in favor of Yellow Dog is throwing their money away. You can run Linux on PC hardware which is way cheaper than Apple hardware, and it will run better than Linux on PPC. Installing Linux or BSD on old Macs makes good sense sometimes, but when you have a top-quality Unix (OS X) which is more beautiful than any other Unix out there, why strive for second best?

    --
    Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
    1. Re:It's a good idea, if you want to waste your Mac by jmu1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps having solid hardware is an issue... not to mention good looking hardware. You can't find better stuff than what Apple is making. I'd rather use Free Software, however. I like where they are going, but Apple just isn't where I would want them to be, software wise.

    2. Re:It's a good idea, if you want to waste your Mac by pete-classic · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You can run Linux on PC hardware which is way cheaper than Apple hardware, and it will run better than Linux on PPC.


      While this is the conventional wisdom, and I have always been an anti-mac guy, I priced a dual gigy PowerMac with a 17in FP and found that perfomance-for-perfomance (as opposed to MHz for MHz) the price is about the same as an Intel box. I think you may actually do a bit better with the Apple when you consider (hardware) support. For me the sexyness factor of the Mac puts it over the top. I mean, the MB is mounted to the side panel. It has handles. It isn't beige (or black, which was cool 'till it was over-done).

      -Peter
  4. Re:How to burn Yellow Dog ISO images? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The OldWorld ROM machines cannot "boot" from the ISO ... you need to use BootX. Plz review the Guide to Installation for more details:

    http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/installati on /guide.shtml

  5. It's a dual boot by mblase · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the record, the store page says that Mac OS X is also preinstalled, and that YDLinux is available as a second OS. So this is just a bonus feature for the hackers.

    That said, I'm not sure I see the point, except possibly bragging rights. If you want to get into *nix on a modern Mac running OS X, all you have to do is open a terminal window and go to it. (Yeah, I know it's BSD instead of Linux, but most of the functionality is the same. And if you really really want a Linux box, wouldn't it be safer to run it on its own cheap x86 hardware instead of having it take up hard drive space on your expensive PowerMac or iBook?)

    1. Re:It's a dual boot by Golias · · Score: 3, Informative
      then I realised that the shell had no syntax highlighting, it didn't have vim... etc

      You know, if you have a decent internet connection and a little know-how (which it seems like you do) you probably could have installed all of the tools you missed (and bash, while you were at it), in less time than it took you to get YDL going on that iBook. My G4 tower has a crapload of GNU tools running on it, and they work great. When I first started out (with 10.0.0), I worried that Apple's automatic software updates might break some of the UNIX toys I was installing, but it hasn't happened, and I've stopped worrying about it. Good design pays off.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  6. Kudos by rberton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I run YDL 2.2 and before that I ran 2.1 on a QuickSilver (867 Mhz) PowerMac. I have been running glitch free for over a year now and my uptime is currently 85 days (power outage caused a reboot).

    The one drawback is that setup was a PITA. I think it's great that Terra Soft is selling these pre-installed to take some of the ass sores out of the setup. Also Kudos to Apple for allowing them to resell with another OS on the machine.

  7. Re:pricing.. and option? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    TSS increased the RAM to a min of 256 on all models we ship. The prices are identical to the Apple Store if you configure them the same.

  8. price time * Timecost by SuperCal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A friend of mine bought a base model iBook online and had it mail ordered home. By the time it reached his home he had already downloaded and burned a linux dist ISO at my house. We had that baby running (by we I mean he) linux in less then a hour. That resaler wants a almost a $200 premium for installing free software. I think spending a hour is worth saving $200.

    --
    Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
  9. Why? by OS24Ever · · Score: 3, Troll

    Seriously, I'm not flaming or trolling. I have an iMac, and I have intel hardware. I've run Linux on Intel Hardware, and I've run OS X.

    Why would I want to replace a unix based OS with an excellent user interface, support for things like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and heck even Flash/Shockwave plugins. None of this is on Linux (unfortunately)

    Now, on the XServe, this could be cool, but on a iBook, PowerBook, iMac or Power Mac I just don't get it.

    --

    As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.

  10. Older machines? by saintlupus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if they'll expand their product line to older machines at some point. I love running OS X on my iMac, but Yellow Dog absolutely 0wnz my 7200/120.

    It just seems that exploiting the main strength of Linux/PPC, it's ability to maximize the potential of older hardware, would be a sound business move.

    --saint

  11. Re:How to burn Yellow Dog ISO images? by pi+radians · · Score: 5, Informative

    TerraSoft would never choose Mandrake over YellowDog... here's why. (Just read the title as to who makes YellowDog Linux.)

    --

    sin(6cos(r)+5A)
  12. No. No, I haven't. by hatless · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, I can't say that I've wished Apple's Xserve ran Linux. OS X is a more polished OS than Linux is, especially on this hardware. It can run essentially all the same software and then some, it has a better JVM and far, far better administration tools for everything from directory services and Apache to Samba. It's got great monitoring tools and drivers for its hardware, true plug-and-play support for things like Firewire RAID arrays, unified management of SMB, Appleshare and NFS file sharing, and commercial grade on-site support for all of the above.

    By going to Linux on it, you get rid of the nice development tools, you sacrifice a lot of the Mac OS 8.x/9.x application compatibility and all of the OS X compatibility. You trade wonderful, richly-featured and consistently designed distributed admin tools for things like webmin. And you give up several avenues for support.

    It's not like PPC Linux will let you run the many x86 commercial packages out there. So unless you're a Linux shop already and someone has given you a free Xserve, why put Linux on it? Surely you can find 1U hardware with comparable performance and more mature Linux driver support for a lot less money, no?

    So no. No, I haven't ever wanted to run Linux on an Xserve.

  13. There can be reasons by Sloppy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    There's multiple posts where people question running Linux when MacOS is already there, and in many ways, just plain better than Linux.

    This is pretty much equivalent to saying, even in the context of x86 hardware, "Why would anyone run Linux when they could run FreeBSD?" or even "Why would anyone run FreeBSD when they could run Linux?" Just because something is good doesn't mean alternatives are necessarily stupid.

    Linux does have features that Darwin doesn't have, BTW. Linux4Video, for example (not that I've ever got it to work on my hardware ;-). It's probably not important for 99% of the population, but no need to call the other 1% of the population stupid.

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    1. Re:There can be reasons by laserjet · · Score: 3, Funny

      Isn't this arguement not even relevant? I heard on slashdot that BSD had died.

      --
      Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
  14. Re:My two cents by frunch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    so it seems natural to couple them with good software

    You mean like OS X? Honestly, I don't see much point in paying for a switch from a Unix-based machine to a Linux-based machine. (And a Linux-based machine that won't run iTunes, iMovie, or iPhoto)

  15. Re:My two cents by timothy_m_smith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is anyone really going to care if the XServe has the ability to run Linux? I really don't see the XServe as having that much value unless you really, really want to run Linux on a PowerPC rack-mounted server. The fact is that the XServe runs a bunch of IDE hard drives which would seem worthless for any real-world applications without any sort of RAID. What kind of business needs 480 Gb of non-fault tolerant disk space? In the end, why not just run on Intel or AMD hardware that will have much better software support.

  16. Re:Why? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Why would I want to replace a unix based OS with an excellent user interface, support for things like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and heck even Flash/Shockwave plugins. None of this is on Linux (unfortunately)"

    Im glad somebody else said this. The answer is "You don't switch to Linux just to gain a few popularity points on Slashdot". Microsoft isn't holding a gun to my head to use Windows 2000, I'm using it because I use Lightwave, Photoshop, After Effects, lotsa games, and the internet in general extensively.

    Too bad my Windows 2000 preference has earned me a reputation for being 'pro-MS' as opposed to being practical.

    The OS is nowhere near as important as the apps you use on it. I wish the Linux zealots out there would learn that before spouting 'Switch to Maya!' every time I breath a word of Lightwave. I'm happy to switch to *nix *if* it benefits me. Until them, I'm a Windows guy. I did not make a bad choice.

  17. Seems kind of stupid. by dasmegabyte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So...you want to trade your decent BSD based OS with quality commercial support, a usable GUI, great built in software and ability to compile pretty much anything for Yellow Dog Linux?

    If so, you may be interested in knowing that I've got a BMW 330i which I've taken the seats out and replaced with phone books and installed an engine from a 1972 Super Beetle. It's a good, solid engine, very hackable. Price is only $3000 more than a new Bimmer.

    --
    Hey freaks: now you're ju
  18. From someone who runs YDL on his Ti by Mr_Icon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A lot of questions here as per "why would anyone run linux when there is OS X?". I personally run YDL on my Titanium, and I have my personal reasons to. Let me see if I can cover them.

    1. I do this primarily for ideological reasons. Aqua is closed-source, proprietary software and I do not like that. Understandably, you may have different ideals, so this might or might not apply to you.
    2. I am a computer professional and whenever I am in OS X, I feel extremely constrained by the interface. Sure, it's pretty. However, I miss my virtual desktops, I miss my hotkeys, I miss focus-follows-mouse, I miss many other things that I'm used to. I miss having a usable mail client (I don't like Mail.app for several reasons that I won't go into). I know that I can "emulate" all those things, but in order to do that I would have to buy even more proprietary software that costs money -- as opposed to already having all of that available under X.
    3. I admit -- I am boggled by the prettyness: from full alpha transparency to the consistency of the interface. Then again, I recently looked at gnome-2, and I like what I see. Full power of X-window -- including network transparency, which is non-existent in OS X -- and nearly just as pretty. Full alpha-transparency support is, of course, not there yet in X-window (apart from cheap tricks like grabbing whatever is below), but I find it actually annoying on OS X most of the time. It doesn't do anything to me in terms of real usefulness. I mean, whooptie-doo, I can see what's below my terminal. Now that's useful.
    4. I don't like having to depend on one vendor for security updates. If I find that TerraSoft is taking too long to come up with a new version of a package, I apply the patches myself and install a patched RPM. In order to do that under OS X I would have to a) have access to the package source (which is not always available), b) guess and double-guess which patches Apple already applies to the packages to make them work, and c) install from source, possibly breaking the Apple's Automated Updater mechanism.
    5. Darwin sucks as a unix. :) You can't just take a product and compile it under Darwin and expect it to work like you would under Linux or most BSD's. I mean -- c'mon, it doesn't even have dlopen. You have to emulate it. Besides, we run Red Hat at the office, and I like to have all configuration files to have the same layout between home and work. It's saner to me that way.

    I do use OS X periodically. I have an MP3 player that can't be accessed from Linux at this time -- it only works from windows and mac classic; and I use Macromedia Fireworks with my Graphire Tablet from time to time. It has its uses. For real work I use YDL.

    From my point of view, OS X is an OS written and suitable entirely for middle-of-the-road users. It's a system that a grandma can use without getting hopelessly lost and confused. I am not a grandma -- I'm an enthusiast. To draw popular analogies to cars, I like to get my hands into the very innards of the system, including replacing the engine, overhauling the suspension, and putting oversized tires. I can only do that efficiently enough under YDL -- when I try to do something like that to OS X, I feel like I'm ricing a Civic.

    As there are companies who sell parts and tools to car enthusiasts, similarly TerraSoft sells a distribution to people who like to be adventurous with their computers. Branding that as "stupid" is not entirely correct, nor really called for.

    Now, why did I get an Apple notebook in the first place? a) I didn't pay for it, :) and b) I was intrigued by OS X. Would I get another Apple notebook? Probably, but not a Titanium. I might get a next-generation iBook, whenever they come out on G4's. Simply because I've already invested in some software on OS X that I would like to keep using (same MM Fireworks, for example). Titanium is like an all-leather interior: good for impressing your date, but no real use otherwise. :)

    --
    If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
  19. YDL by Ryan+Amos · · Score: 3, Informative

    These are also the guys who ship Yellow Dog Linux, an EXCELLENT professional distro for the PowerPC. This is really old news to the PPC Linux community, Terra Soft has been doing this for years. This is mostly aimed at people who want to set up servers/labs, NOT home users. Their Black Lab clustering system is bar-none one of the coolest things I've seen a company do (yes, you CAN have a beowulf cluster of these... they'll even set it up for you!) Anyway, if you have a PowerPC system, check out Yellow Dog, it's a very cool distro (it's apt based, which is another plus.)