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Yellow Dog Linux Gets 64-Bit Version For G5
An anonymous reader writes "There is an announcement on the YellowDogLinux.com page regarding the new release of a 64-bit distribution of Yellow Dog Linux for the Apple G5 and some custom hardware from IBM. The 64-bit release is being dubbed 'Y-HPC' and is scheduled to be released along with the new 32-bit Yellow Dog 4 at the end of May."
I guess you do it if you really, really want a 64-bit OS.
Also, somebody at Yellow Dog once told me that most of their sales were in the sciences/HPC arena. It may be that their custom software requires more parts of the OS or core libraries to be open/modifiable than Apple provides. Yes, you might be able to pull it off by downloading Fink, or building your own Darwin kernel or whatever -- but if you can get Linux pre-installed (something the Yellow Dog people provide), then why bother?
Breakfast served all day!
Since SuSE has locked up the deal with IBM, it would be good to have a less expensive or "free" 64-bit distro for pSeries hardware. Right now all you can get is SuSE and Redhat. (Debian will run on an rs6000, but not 64 bit AFAIK). To get one of these you have to shell out at least a grand. Then again, if you have a 64-bit pSeries, you are not worried about money.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
While your point is valid in the way that many of Apple's customers buy a Mac for the total package. The cohesive nature of all things Mac (both on the hardware and software sides), which is so endemic to the platform, are a primary motivating factor.
That said, I initially began using Linux to fulfill both my curiosity, and for the availability of such high-powered software - all of which is largely free. That was back when I began my college work; I'm now old enough, and thereby have enough money in the bank, that the latter reason for my taking up Linux is not an important reason for my continuing use of it.
Truly, my interest and love for Linux is now supported solely by my unending curiosity in complex software systems. I want to be able to take apart and piece together all elements of my system; I want to be able to inspect and tinker.
I think a user's inability to do this on this still greatly proprietary MacOS platform, answers your original inquiry. YellowDog does support a true niche market; I'm glad they've been, and continue to be successful, and I think the reason for their success is that many people still cherish the ability of open software systems. Even if that system isn't as cohesive as MacOSX.
I first started using Linux almost 6 years ago when I was a 15 year old high school sophomore. Most of my friends and I thought it was da shit until OSX came out and then most of us dropped Linux like a bad habit for OSX. There are so many areas that OSX beats Linux for most geeky things that I couldn't even begin to start.
Since so many geeks are fond of comparing computers to cars, think of it like this. A Mac is like a cross between a BMW and a V6 Accord. It's fast, stylish, reliable and expensive, but it definitely looks cool to most people. A PC can be anything from a pinto to a ferrari, but is usually like a typical late 80s, early 90s American car on reliability. It may go faster and turn sometimes better, but it falls apart a lot faster than the more expensive hybrid Honda/BMW (aka, the Mac of cars).
Many of my peers in CS used to not be able to understand why I almost never use PCs anymore. We do a lot of work in Java, some of it in C/C++. They cannot comprehend how the Mac JDK runs faster than a Windows JDK. Or for that matter how convenient it is to have your Swing apps look 99% native. If I demonstrate an app to my prof on my laptop, which is a 1Ghz G4, it usually has more of a wow factor because Apple's Swing defaults to Aqua which is a hell of a lot slicker than anything from KDE or Redmond.
It's all of the little things that make MacOS X worth using over Linux. From the ease of which you can install software to the consistency of the interface to the amount of good software for it as opposed to Linux. Linux is great, but it's not really got much of a place on modern Macs. Between the services that Apple provides like its own version of Apache and Fink, you have most of the software you'd use Linux for.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I always see posts where people rationalize buying Apple laptops buy saying "if I don't like OSX I can always put linux on it". This makes it a lot easier for apple to get people to switch from linux to OSX. Maybe apple should try to make macs that are capable of running Windows so more people will switch to macs from the Windows world.
I love OS X, but am really looking forward to trying out 64-bit Linux on a dual G5.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
A while ago I saw an article where the U.S. government bought a bunch of apple Xserve's to use interpreting sonar images on submarines. Of coarse they wanted linux for an application like that. The interesting thing is that they didn't buy the Xserve's directly from apple because if the hire-ups knew that they were buying macs they wouldn't approve it. They had been using G4's with custom made boards before they bought the Xseve's.
That's not the only software that is available for Linux and not for Mac. For some people, a couple missing programs is what they need.
Personally, I would like to dual-boot Linux alongside OS X. You don't have to "wipe out" Mac OS X and run only Linux. The only thing that stops me from doing this is that my Apple is a PowerBook, and there is still no support for Airport Extreme wireless cards in Linux. I'm always on wireless nets (between my apartment, my girlfriend's, and the university campus), never plugged in. As soon as that is supported, I'll start looking to set up a dual-boot.
Given the G5 uses the same jointly-developed-by-AMD-and-Apple HyperTransport bus architecture that the only 64-bit x86 chips on the market use, I'm skeptical that the G5 outperforms them on I/O tasks. Have any numbers comparing the Athlon 64 and G5?
You've been reading too many Anandtech and Tom's Hardware "reviews". Read up on some science-related mailing lists, newsgroups etc. For some tasks, the x86 variants are faster, for other tasks, the PPC970 is faster. Hell, Linpack is mostly CPU-bound, and 2200 PPC970's beat the crap out of 2816 Opterons at 2GHz.
Also, check out the performances at various tasks such as FFT's. Or why not crypto? Don't make such blanket statements, instead do some research aimed at what you wish to perform on the hardware.
Cheesy marketing drivel, yes, but with a grain of truth. At the risk of being moded down to Hades by Mac lovers, let me very carefully point out that to some of us, OS X is not the operating system to end all operating systems. It has some problems (like a clumsy finder that dumps its bloody .DS_Store files all over every filesystem it can get its hands on), some severe limitations (like a Mail program that doesn't do TLS), and lacks important capabilities (no well-integrated office program except MS Office).
Don't get me wrong, OS X is probably the best operating system available for pure-consumer type users. When my co-worker complained to me a few days ago that he caught some sort of dialer virus thingy, I told him (politely) to get rid of the problem (Microsoft) and buy a Mac. Is Linux for him? No. He would be very happy with Apple's closed-world, choice-is-bad philosophy.
Some of us, however, like choice, and don't want to, say, pay extra for modern features like virtual desktops that Apple's engineers consider too confusing for us and are covered by shareware. I want a modern mailer (good grief, even the 0.5 BETA of Mozilla Thunderbird has TLS), I want Konqueror instead of the brain-damaged Finder, I want my right-click-lelf-click-done! mouse back. But I love the hardware: My iBook G4 is quiet under heavy loads, for example, and battery life is good.
Linux on a PowerPC gives you the best of both worlds -- even more so because you can use Mac-on-Linux to run your Mac OS X applications from inside Linux. Nobody is talking about wiping OS X off the computer (well, except maybe for this guy), because, remember, though Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are jealous computer gods, Linus is not. I did dual-boot for years with Windows before swiching completely. You can have your cake and eat it, too.
A lot of Mac people I have gotten to know after buying my iBook have no idea how good KDE and Gnome have become, they seem to think that Linux users still have to figure out the refresh parameters for X11 by hand. With more and more Linux people moving to PowerPC hardware, I think we'll see more discussions between OS X and Linux users. Linux can give OS X a good run for its mon-, er, can force Apple to try harder, a lot harder, in fact. And that is good for Mac fans, too.
The press release doesn't mention if the OS supports the G5 fans correctly. Will all 8-9 fans (+1 for the 9800 Pro if upgraded) be blowing full throttle the entire time? My understanding is that current non-OS X installations do this.