Slashdot Mirror
Linux Coming to Power Mac G5
Justen writes "Terra Soft, the people behind Yellow Dog Linux (YDL), announced that they will be supporting the new Power Mac G5. Since they are an Apple Authorized Reseller, you can purchase your Power Mac G5 through Terra Soft and have YDL pre-installed on a separate partition from Mac OS X. According to Terra Soft, 'as Yellow Dog Linux was in 2000 enabled for the IBM Power3 by IBM Lab and Linuxcare, and subsequently for the Power4, the effort to support the 970-based Apple computers is anticipated to be completed with relative ease.' Life is good. Anyone wanna loan me $2,000?"
I'm sorry, but why in the hell would I want to pay the premimum cash for the premium computer and *not* run the premium OS X.
1;
Sure, I'll loan you 2K. I expect you to pay it back at 16% P.A. compounded daily over 24 months. Interested? Contact me. Where's a G5 to do the interest calcs when I need one?
Oh... perhaps your really wanted me to give you 2000$? ;-)
I don't understand why anyone would bother running Linux on a Mac. For $99 you can purchase Mac OS X and get real live tech support for problems that (probably won't) pop up. There's a lot of technical reasons you should run Mac OS instead of Linux.
Linux has its origins on IA32, Intel's 32-bit architecture. Every platform Linux has migrated to since then has been beset with porting problems-- Linux runs 32% more efficiently on Intel than PowerPC. This is very telling as PowerPC is in general much faster per clock than Intel. Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.
Mac OS is 100% native for PowerPC. The Mach kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Why choose a hacked and kludged OS from another platform when you can have an environment tailor-made for the system you'll be running it on? Mac OS certainly isn't plagued by same driver problems Linux is (in)famous for.
In Linux, the development model is highly irrational: anyone is allowed to submit patches, and one man (Linus Torvalds) sorts through gigabyte after gigabyte of amateurish code, attempting to integrate it into the kernel. Apple's model is much more modern and decisive: the code for the low levels of Mac OS is available for anyone to download and modify, while the more complex parts of the system (QuickTime and OpenGL) are kept closed-source so those that know better-- the Apple programmers-- are the only ones allowed to tinker.
The results because of these differing development models are clear. Apple released a major update to the OS once a year, and releases about five minor updates to the OS, as well as several dozen security patches and driver updates, in the interim. Since March of 2001 we've gone from 10.0 to 10.2.5! Linux is still stuck at some sort of bizarre "in-between" 2.5 kernel patch and won't move on to 2.6 until well after Apple has released Mac OS 10.3.
It's not hard to see the difference here is a bunch of kids playing with source code instead of doing their homework vs. highly qualified professionals pushing their skills to the limits. The Mac OS user benefits.
I don't even think I have to touch on this. While Linux offers several GUIs from GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment, Apple offers only one. But here we have a case of quality vs. quantity. Apple controls the GUI for its operating system while anyone can hack and modify the various Linux GUIs as they please. This has led to a lack of desktop standards and a whole lot of bickering and flame wars over human interface guidelines. Most of the GUIs for Linux are simply poor knock-offs of the Windows 95 interface.
Apple's Aqua and QuickTime graphical interfaces are faster, more elegant, and very consistent. A Mac user can sit down at any Mac and (assuming someone hasn't installed Linux) get right to work. With Linux, it's hit or miss as to whether the user will know what to do when he logs in! Getting work done is the most important aspect of a computer. After all, it is just a tool. Linux fails in this area miserably-- you're forced to edit and tinker and kludge and hack to make things perfect. A Mac allowes you to just sit down and roll up your sleeves and get some work done. I don't have time to play at my job.
I've used Linux before and the headache of downloading drivers and libraries and making sure the versions all sync up are too mucvh to handle, especiallly considering one has to compile these applications. On a Mac, I mount a disk image and drag the .app file to /Applications, and I'm done. Hell, most software for Mac even installs it there for you. To put this in perspective, let's look at a recent task I performed under both Linux 2.4 and Mac OS
Yellow Dog Linux has always been a great addition to the Macintosh platform. It's good to see that they are keeping up their excellent support of Apple. More choice is always good and the fact that people can buy systems directly from TerraSoft with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed is definitely a plus.
My hope is that both Apple and TerraSoft continue to work together and bring ideas back and forth between MacOS and Linux.
Sapere aude!
Maybe you should stop posting the same message over and over again, and realize that your machine doesn't run OS X, and you point is not valid at all.
This thread is about the new G5 and Yellow Dog Linux, not your problems with your old powermac, that won't even run YDL without BootX, which makes running YDL slow as hell.
Stop booing Macs because the one you run is old, and especially when your problem is the hard drive, you can stick a 7200RPM drive in any machine to make this excercise faster, mac or PC.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Remember Jeff Goldblum: get the iMac because it is blue.
Apple users care about what the computer case looks like. Insignifant considerations like actually doing things on the machine when it is turned on come in second, if at all.
Apple's processor white paper states that the G5 is the "World's first 64-bit desktop processor". What about Sun's chips? I've even seen 64-bit laptops. Can someone clear this up?
Carpe meam simiam!
I thought that yesterday's veritest g5 specint report was funny when it comes to describing how they configured the systems. They compared OSX vs. Redhat 9.
/etc/hostconfig manually, physically remove a processor and reboot twice.
One pages 5-6, the describe the apple process for each of the 2 configurations. Each config is about 1/2 page or 24 lines. Besides control panel stuff, you must edit
The redhat config, on page 7, is only 9 lines long, requires no file editing, and has only the initial boot to select 1 or 2 processors.
It seems that easy-of-configuration is a reason to use these new machines with linux!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
$20 T-shirt? Well, lah de dah. All the shirts I have I got for free.
i thought YDL was dead. Least thats what ev'ry one says. YDL on mac. I have yet to see.....
Hardware is what you kick, Software is what you curse.
This is hardly news. Linux is running on cell phones, VCRs, microwave ovens, and vacuum cleaners these days...
Give me something really geeky, like someone hacked their cat to run linux, or the mars rover, or a dill pickle or something...
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
ESR is now quite happy with the latest version of Apple's license, which was released in direct response to his complaints about it.
The open source community (as opposed to the Free-As-In-What-I-Say-Is-Free software community) complains, Apple revises, and then ESR, at least, is happy. But people like you have to go back to his INITIAL complaints in order to find something to complain about.
That's annoying. Also (possibly intentionally, possibly not) intellectually dishonest.
-Fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
...is pretty sweet, actually, though the software isn't built into the default OS install yet. I'd point you to the downloads, but I can't remember where they are. Sorry.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I'm not sure whether that's thrifty but sad or just sad.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
My guess is that VM, combined with a slow fragged disk is his main problem. Computer problem. His social problem is that he is a troll.
ok, let's break this down logically:
. both linux and osx/darwin are "unix-like".
. generally, any tool that compiles for linuxppc should be able to compile for osx/darwin (assuming you've installed the latest devtools from apple).
. linux has package management such as apt and portage (rpm blows, admit it.), but osx/darwin does have fink (apt port) and darwinports (bsd-ports, uh, port).
. so really the major difference is the kernel, linux doing its monolithic thing and osx/darwin doing it's mach thing.
BUT (and this is key here) what happens if you want to use a tool in osx that requires the linux kernel? just about more than half of every interesting networking tool requires the linux kernel (airsnort, iptables, etc.)
so what is a true geek to do? run MOL (mac-on-linux). put linux in charge of hardware and low level unix, and boot osx from within it as your tty7. add it to your init.d default or whatever, with boot-args="-v" the whole shebang can look like one long boot sequence to get uber-osx running.
Well, why would one run Linux/BSD on a recent MAC ? Because its the only way to get rid of the IA32 crap.
No sun, no used alpha nor any other "unix" RISC workstation offer that price/performance ratio as the the G5. You do not want IA32, you go apple.
I'd rather buy an equally priced, 970 based IBM workstation, that accepts "PC-Style Hardware" and does not run OS-X at all, but, there is none as of now.
Besides, the PPC port of Gnu/Linux is application wise most likely the best supported after intel.
I may be the only one on this planet, but I prefer Windowmaker to the MacOSX GUI (I know about the common background of both). I am more than happy with the free software offered and could not afford the Mac Apps anyway.
I simply like that "Unix workstation" feeling and I am not a friend of those overblown GUIs. I consider using windowmaker with keyboard way more effective and pleasant to work. Maybe I haven't invested enough time configuring OSX for nearly-keyboard-only use, but right now I do not really enjoy working with OSX. Oh, and did I mention that windowmaker feels "snappier" than OSX big time ?
Thats why my ibook boots linux only nowadays. And same will most likely be true for the G5, after having given OSX through Panther a second chance, of course.
So, basically, if I use windowmaker and "linux/BSD apps" only anyway, why should I run darwin instead ?
I'm sure it was just a simple oversight but you actually meant to post this at www.asininefucktardswholiveinmomsbasement.com. Also, it's quite obvious that you don't use OS X since it has a built-in spell check but I'm also sure that is insignificant to you. What a dumbass.
YDL works pretty well, drivers and all on just about every G3 and G4. Driver issues haven't been an issue in my limited experience. Still i agree, OS X rocks but let 'em choose but hope they choose wisely. Any Apple sales is generally good for inovation in the PC or PPC industry.