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."

Comments

Just curious

[Neo-Rio-101]

Just curious.... but who wipes out MacOSX on the G5 to replace it with Linux? Call me a troll, but I just don't see the point when there are cheaper architectures out there.

Re:Just curious

[JanneM]

Such a machine may well fall into your lap from somewhere - a friend always uppgrading to the latest wanting to sell off some stuff; getting an opportunity to buy it used, cheaply (from a failed business, for instance); or wanting a G5 for some reason, but not OSX.

And don't forget the possibility of people that leave Linux to go for OSX, then, after a while, decide Linux was a better fit for their work after all.

Re:Just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

The people for whom:

1. The hardware provides an advantage over other hardware.
2. The existing OS (OSX) doesn't do the job.

The hardware costs $$, yes. And OSX is a very very good OS, but for some purposes cost of the hardware is a minor issue and an existing linux solution may do the job immensely well with a strong stable track record

Re:Just curious

[xenotrout]

I don't know about the G5, but I have an iBook running GNU/Linux (just linux, not dual boot). The iBook is very light weight, slim, and quiet. There are a bunch of other good mechanical/design features as well.

Re:Just curious

[pararox]

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.

Re:Just curious

[kitzilla]

We don't wipe out OS X (well, we do -- then we repartition and reload). Then it's dual boot time.

I love OS X, but am really looking forward to trying out 64-bit Linux on a dual G5.

Re:Just curious

[bsartist]

That's really two questions - why buy a G5, and why put Linux on it.

For the first, the answer is I/O. For purely CPU bound benchmarks, the G5 compares fairly well with 64-bit x86 chips, but it's nothing to write home about. On the other hand, the I/O subsystem smokes, so unless you're doing almost pure number crunching, that's something you have to take into account as well.

As for putting Linux on it, it's funny you should ask that in a comment for this particular story - prior to this release I would have asked the same thing. However, YDL appears to now offer something that OS X doesn't - a full 64-bit address space for applications. Mac OS X is not "full" 64-bit; the OS can manage all 8GB of RAM, and apps can use 64-bit ints. But, apps run in a 32-bit address space.

Re:Just curious

[seanadams.com]

This is a really good question, and not a troll at all.

The answer is "people like me" and the explanation is as follows: roughly once or twice a year, I find that my job requirement shifts a bit, and the platform of choice for said work might change overnight from windows to macos to linux. One of the reasons I used yellowDog for about a year was because I really liked my g4 machine and its cinema display, and didn't want to junk it just so that I could run the OS (linux) which I needed at the time to get my work done.

These days I usually spend about 1/3 of my time in windows, 1/3 in linux, and 1/3 in MacOS. Certainly I enjoy my life the most while in MacOS, but that's beside the point. The solution for getting my work done has come down to runing Mac at the office, and Linux + vmWare at home. With this setup I have just one machine at each location, and between the two I cover all my needs in a day. The linux machine is the stablest and fastest a=of them all, and I really wish that masos could be one of my vmware sessions... but that's another story.

Anyway, I agree that YellowDog linux is really a niche product, given that slicker OSes+applications exist for the hardware in question. But sometimes Linux is what you need, and sometimes a Mac is what you want to use, and that's when YellowDog is the answer.

Re:Just curious

[kc8apf]

I put linux on my Xserve. It's a server. Linux fit the problem better. No GUI overhead, easier to maintain, etc.

For G5s, the person generally is either using it as a server or for sciTech work, such as long simulations or massive calculations.

The sciTech programs are typically written on linux x86 systems and then someone else gets the job of finding the best system to run them. Putting linux on a G5 ends up being easier than getting the initial developer to port the app. Not to mention it gives a consistant interface for all the systems regardless of architecture. This has the nice side effect of making it easier for the admins to maintain the systems and keep up to date on whats new.

Re:Just curious

[gantrep]

Wouldn't it be just as light, slim and quiet with os x? The question is why run linux on a mac, not why choose a mac.

Re:Just curious

[JanneM]

Um, because you prefer Linux over OSX?

Because you're developing Linux apps, not OSX apps, and that is easier to do using Linux directly than try to do it via OSX?

Because you like the hardware, but want to distance yourself from a user community seen by many as insular, conformant and intolerant?

Because you are working on UI issues (either as a hobby or professionally) and it is easier to experiment with new and alternative UI designs on an OS that does not have a deeply ingrained standard UI already?

There can be any number of reasons. Don't disparage people for making choices different from yours (see my third example above).

Re:Just curious

[pyrotic]

I'm very impressesed by OSX, and I use it on my laptop, but I wouldn't want it on our servers. Partitioning disks, software RAID, tpmfs, RPM/yum, kickstart, logrotation, disk quotas, cron - these are all things that I prefer the linux way of working. And then there's all the shell scripts that we already use with linux that need to be tweaked for Apple's unix. I like the way you can install linux without a gui. If we were looking for a 64 bit 1U server, we'd choose the xServe over Sun's comparable hardware.

Re:Just curious

[mrklin]

---Such a machine may well fall into your lap from somewhere

Don't tell me.

Your real name doesn't happen to be Tony Soprano and you don't happen to live in New Jersey, where many such G5s fall into your lap from a truck somewhere, right?

Re:Just curious

[SEE]

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?

Re:Just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

The G5s are using a 1Ghz FSB..

Athlons are up to 800 something Mhz, and Xeons are stuck around 400Mhz, at the top end.

For moving data around, G5s are pretty damn fast.

Re:Just curious

[BasilBrush]

Yet another reason for putting Linux on a Mac G5. It cuts down on software differences so you can get better comparative benchmarks against X86 processors. I think you'll be getting your benchmarks anaginst X86 64 bit processors before long.

Re:Just curious

[Shinobi]

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.

Re:Just curious

[Nutria]

Athlons are up to 800 something Mhz, and Xeons are stuck around 400Mhz, at the top end.

• Athlon32 - 400MHz (200MHz x 2)
• P4 - 800MHz (200MHz x 4)
• Xeon - ???? (Probably 266MHz x 2)
• AMD64 - no FSB between CPU & RAM

Re:Just curious

[jeremyp]

Because you like the hardware, but want to distance yourself from a user community seen by many as insular, conformant and intolerant?

Which user community is that? The Windows, Mac, Linux or BSD community? There are people in all of those that could be described as you have described them.

I'd never base my choice of hardware or software on what the other people who use it are like (if you can even make such a generalisation).

Re:Just curious

[10Ghz]

So that would be, what, a year behind the G5?

G5 NEEDS that ultra-fast FSB since it does it's RAM access through it. Athlon64/Opteron does not, since the CPU talks with the RAM directly via the integrated mem-controller. While 2GHz G5 has 1GHZ bus, it's NOT one bit better than the 800Mhz bus on A64, since on A64 that 800Mhz is 100% available to NIC's, PCI-devices, HD's etc. etc., since RAM-access does not eat in to the bandwidth (like it does on the G5).

G5 is a fine CPU, but it's not the be all end all CPU some people make it out to be. In some cases it's considerably behind A64 (where's the integrated mem-controller huh?)

Re:Just curious

[Short Circuit]

Neither are any of Intels other current x86 offerings. The 64-bit nature of any G5 competitor is irrelevant anyway; 64-bits won't inherently improve your app unless it's the memory/address space you need to tune (read, remove swapping kludges) your app.

In the PC world, 64-bit computing has been bundled with other, arguably more useful features (like an extra 8 GPRs on x86-64), in order to make it available for future usage.

In the Mac world, 64-bit computing is there because Apple chose to stop selling non-64-bit hardware.

Re:Just curious

[kalemba]

Because you like the hardware, but want to distance yourself from a user community seen by many as insular, conformant and intolerant?

insular, conformant AND intolerant?

if you're looking to avoid this type of "user community" than you should pack up and leave linux and /. and probably geekdom in general.

this is the funniest thing i have read today.

Re:Just curious

[gozar]

FYI, you can install OSX Server without the gui... In fact, you can install it on a machine without a keyboard, mouse or monitor. It could be locked away (but that would make it switching disks a little hard). The XServes have a serial port so you can even do it over a terminal.

A lot of people only think of the capabilities of OS X Client when in the server role they should look at OS X Server. You can configure everything over SSH, and they are a bunch of GUI tools to make things even easier.

Re:Just curious

[Espectr0]

Who knows, maybe one day we could get our macs without an OS. They are a hardware company after all.

Apple, are you listening?

Re:Just curious

[Hoser McMoose]

First point, Apple had exactly ZERO to do with developping Hypertransport. Nothing, nodda, zippo, zilch! Hypertransport is primarily an AMD developped technology with a little bit of help from the now defunct API (Alpha Processor Inc.). Apple may be part of the Hypertransport Consortium, but so are about 90 other companies that had nothing to dow ith the development of Hypertransport.

Second point, the PowerPC 970 does NOT use Hypertransport as it's bus! Hypertransport in the PowerMac G5 is ONLY used as an interconnect between the memory and processor controller and the other two I/O chips (at least one of which is actually an AMD chip).

The PPC 970 uses the Elastic I/O bus, designed and developped by none other than IBM. This is a dual 32-bit wide unidirectional point-to-point bus running at up to 1.0GT/s. The bus isn't all that well documented, so I'm not sure if it's a true 1.0GHz bus or a 500MHz DDR bus or a 250MHz QDR bus. I would guess it's 250MHz QDR, though the difference is somewhat accademic. Either way, the bus provides for up to 4.0GB/s of bandwidth in either direction and since it is point-to-point connection, the bus is not shared on dual-processor systems.

In the end, this bus is actually a lot like what AMD used to use on their AthlonXP and AthlonMP line. The only differences are that the PPC 970 bus runs at a higher effective data rate and it is a pair of 32-bit unidirectional buses rather than the single 64-bit bi-directional bus on the AthlonXP.

For the Intel side of things you get a 400MT/s (100MHz QDR) to 800MT/s (200MHz QDR) 64-bit wide bi-directional bus. Current Xeons top out at 533MT/s (133MHz QDR). Unlike the AthlonMP and PowerPC 970 bus, Intel uses a shared bus. This is why the Xeon doesn't scale too well going from one to two processors and scales pretty horribly when going from two to four processors (beyond 4 CPUs you need separate buses, crossbars and all sorts of other fancy things beyond the scope of this discussion). The next generation of Xeon, to be released anywhere between 1 and 9 months from now (depending on what source your look at) will go up to the same 800MT/s bus that the desktop P4s use, that should provide a fairly decent boost in performance for multiprocessor Xeon systems. That will give the Xeon up to 6.4GB/s of bandwidth (either upstream or downstream, but not at the same time).

Of course, when it comes to the absolute beast of moving data around for commodity hardware, you have to look to the Opteron. While the G5 may easily have the Xeon beat in this regard, the Opteron stomps over both of them quite handily.

First and foremost, the Opteron changes all the rules by moving the memory controller on-die. On the PPC 970 and Intel P4/Xeon the memory controller hangs off the memory and processor controller chip (often called a "Northbridge", a name that dates back to early PCI days). This means that they are sharing one bus for both their memory tranfic and general purpose I/O. On the Opteron the two buses are separate. It has a 128-bit wide, 400MT/s (6.4GB/s) memory bus AND not one but *THREE* 1600MT/s dual 16-bit unidirectional Hypertransport connections for all other I/O. That's 3.2GB/s in either direction for each of the three HT links. Plus, since it's a NUMA architecture, in multiprocessor systems this bandwidth adds together rather than being shared.

What's perahps even more important than the raw bandwidth advantage the Opteron has over other setups is the latency advantage. Since everything is integrated onto the processor it significantly reduces the latency for I/O. In many applications latency is actually more important than raw bandwidth.

Long story short, don't look at just the clock speeds (or even the effective clock speeds that the marketing people like to toss around), there's a lot more too it than that. All three of these chips (PowerPC 970, Opteron and Xeon) have various advantages and disadvantages, but when it comes to I/O, the Opteron is far and away the leader of

Re:Just curious

[mduell]

Xeon - 533MHz (133Mhz x 4)

Re:Just curious

[Ryan Amos]

No; Apple is in the business of selling hardware. They create the software to sell the hardware. You'd still have to pay for the R&D on that software even if you don't want it, because they pay for the software by selling the hardware. Essentially, the software costs them nothing because they don't have to pay any per-machine licenses. But OS X is the reason most people buy a Mac. You'd probably just pirate a copy of OS X to put on it anyway; if you want a daily-usable unix system, OS X blows Linux out of the water on hardware support, commercial app support, basically everything you might want to do that doesn't involve programming. And even then, Apple's free IDE is pretty fucking sweet.

Re:Just curious

[System.out.println()]

Let's break it down, just for fun....

Insular: an "insular community" is something of an oxymoron, but Mac communities tend to be relatively accepting of people who don't own Macs, as long as they don't hate Macs either. (If you hate Macs what the hell are you doing at that forum anyway?) I never got into any forums of the others, but if real-world experience is anything like the forums, Windows would be the most insular. "Your computer should do this... well here's your solution.... buy a PC..." (And before that gets quoted, they're usually talking about something that takes a few seconds of work, example, Windows networking.)

Conformant: Excuse me? You're thinking Windows. "I don't know what OS to get.... I'll get the one everyone else seems to be getting." Macheads could be seen as conformant to Apple's programs, but only because Apple's programs tend to kick other programs' ass. (Mail.app vs Entourage, Safari vs. IE; the Mozilla equivalents are nearly the same, featurewise, as the Mac versions, only less pretty.) Linux users could be seen as Slashbots.

Intolerant: You know why Macs and Linux aren't more common in the workplace? Because Microsoft's software is closed-standard (AKA "intolerant") - and in many cases, ignorant sysadmins refuse to support other OS's even if it involves little more than flipping a switch.

Whew, that was fun. :)

Re:why?

[PCM2]

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?

Will it work on a pSeries?

[bigredradio]

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.

I've never been that impressed with Linux on Macs

[ShatteredDream]

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.

Re:why? easy.

[rohan_leader]

This is a matter of personal preference really.

One obvious reason is that Yellow Dog is completely free as in beer and OSX is not. You have to purchase every second update and it is not *completely* open source. Even if it IS apple, the magic words, "open-source" does make people listen up.

If compatibility with industry standard programs such as Microsoft Office and Photoshop is not needed, and if the UI is unimportant to you, then linux might be an option.

People use OSX to have the best of both worlds: to have the familiar "hacker" interface, the shell, and also have the convenience of programs. If you're going to run a server, linux will run faster, without Cocoa or X Windows, no question about it. Or, if you're addicted to KDE or fluxbox, why use the Aqua interface then? (yes, there IS an X11 server for apple, but hey, it is an alternative...)

The most convincing reason, I think, is the rpm format. You can use programs like yum although I believe that is for i386, and redhat/fedora, but certainly, it derived from the original yellow dog updater (would anyone care to provide a link?). You can keep your system up to date easily with a known technology, set as a cron job, perhaps.

Re:Gotta ask...

[Moofie]

They're well known in Mac circles. They've been around for a long time, and they seem to have a solid product.

However, I can't see myself ever thinking "Boy, I sure wish my computer's UI was way crappier than the one I bought...let's install Linux!"

*dons fireproof jockstrap*

Re:why?

[DeathPenguin]

Same reason someone would install Linux on an x86 with Windows pre-installed.

That, and OS X is not fully 64-bit yet.

This is definitely good for Apple

[fredmosby]

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.

Re:This is definitely good for Apple

[sr180]

They've already tried that. First they had emulators, then they had PC cards that fitted inside your Mac, then they had emulators again, then they had PowerPC's that did both, then emulators again... I think they have emulators atm..

Re:why?

[bastard01]

I would probably think that they want to run the G5 at it's true 64 bit capacity, since OS X doesn't really have native 64 bit support, and probably won't for at least a little while. Although for the older Titanium Powerbooks, YDL worked very well with the hardware in the more recent releases, I was impressed. Although I currently use OS X on my Macs, I am glad that if they are developing linux for Macs because it is nice to have a choice.

Re:why?

[cilix]

why would anyone with a g5 who's already running os x want to run yellow dog linux? (serious question.)

I know several linux geeks who really liked OSX when they started using it but found it more and more annoying as time went by. Not being very customisable was a common complaint. (no focus follows mouse etc)

Also, if you want a linux box with 8GB of RAM, it wouldn't be a bad choice.

Some people think software freedom is important.

[jbn-o]

In a nutshell, some people are willing to go the extra mile for software freedom. I'm one of those people. I've paid for free software before and I'll do it again. I dig it, I thoroughly enjoy being a part of the free software community, and I enjoy being able to make copies of free software for my friends and help them get jobs done. All without breaking the law or compromising my values.

Re:Gotta ask...

[Durindana]

Yellow Dog's been the premier Linux solution for Macs specifically, and PowerPCs in general, for several years now, since A/UX and MkLinux for the 68k more or less fell into disuse. Mandrake has maintained a PPC distro (skipping some point releases and not supporting as much hardware as on x86) for awhile, but Yellow Dog put out a quality product. And it's the only thing they do, which matters.

Probably more important is Yellow Dog's long-standing PPC Linux hardware solutions, e.g. the Yellow Briq Node G3/G4 standalone server. Terra Soft does a good bit of HPC consulting and installation (check their web pages for a few site descriptions and PPC Linux "wins").

In short, Yellow Dog is _the_ Linux distro for Macs, has been since 3.1 or so when it really blew Mandrake 8 away in terms of legacy and peripheral support. People doing real Linux work on PPC, especially if they're serious about PPC but don't care about having OS X, already are familiar with Yellow Dog. With *nix aficionados supposedly moving to the Mac in droves, opinion leaders are going to steer them toward Yellow Dog, rather than Debian or Mandrake/PPC. It's Red Hat for Macs, more or less.

Re:why?

[fredmosby]

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.

Good to hear it

[menace3society]

Being locked into an OS, even if it's the niftiest thing in the universe (which OS X is), and even if it's core is open-source, is a bad thing. If you buy a refrigerator, you don't want to be locked into whatever food it comes with, plus whatever further food stipends the manufacturer provides. Having another good software reason to buy a mac (64-bit Linux with AltiVec) will only help Apple's sales, and make the newest Macs a force to be reckoned with in high-end personal computing.

Re:Good to hear it

[oscast]

I don't know why anyone would think that you're locked into OS X if you buy a Mac. There's just as many OSes for PPC as there is X86.

Here's one reason: J2ME development

[AvantLegion]

Currently, Sun does not offer the WTK (Wireless ToolKit) for the Mac platform - only Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

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.

Re:why? easy.

[citog]

Forgive me if I'm wrong here. Reading http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/ or the link in the article:

'Y-HPC' -- Terra Soft's new 64-bit offering will be available pre-installed on Apple, IBM, and Momentum 970-based hardware, from the Terra Soft Store, and for download from the forthcoming YDL.net Professional account.
and

Built upon Yellow Dog Linux v3.0.1, a beta version of Y-HPC is now available for download via YDL.net Enhanced accounts, offering double-precision, 8GB memory addressing, 64-bit tool chain, and the 2.6 kernel.

The key bits being the references to YDL.net Enhanced & Professional accounts. Enhanced costs $85 which isn't completely free as in beer. Granted, that is cheaper (possibly quite a bit cheaper over time/multiple release??) than OS X. However, I don't think it's the cost factor that will be the major attraction. As you mention, some server apps may be faster on the G5/Linux platform rather than G5/OS X. When choosing between OS X & YDL for the desktop, I personally don't see the advantage for the mainstream user (i.e. the largest group of Mac users).

All that said, having this choice is a good thing and if I ever get a G5, I'll give it a go :)

Aha!

[RadRafe]

There's the long-awaited IBM G5 blade server! I knew it was coming, and now it's here.

BladeCenter JS20

Specs, as stated on IBM's page:

Modular blade server optimized for the BladeCenter enclosure

Two PowerPC® 970 processors at up to 1.6GHz standard

512MB standard/4GB max PC2700 ECC DDR memory

Up to two IDE hard disk drives for 80GB maximum internal storage

Two Gigabit Ethernet controllers standard with load balancing and failover features
$2,699

How disappointing. For the sake of perspective, here's the Xserve G5 Cluster Node:

Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5

512MB DDR400 ECC SDRAM

80GB Serial ATA drive

Mac OS X Server (10 Client)

Dual Gigabit Ethernet
$2,999

OK, so the IBM server is slightly cheaper. But look what you get:

slower processors: 1.6 GHz vs. 2.0 GHz

slower memory: 333MHz vs. 400MHz

slower storage: ATA-100 vs. SATA

no storage in the standard model: 0 GB vs. 80 GB

less expandable storage: 80 GB vs. 750 GB

less expandable memory: 4 GB vs. 8 GB

That being the case, I'd say this is a disappointing product. Why would anyone choose it over the Xserve?

Ever Used YDL?

[Becho62282]

Have any of you ever used YDL at all?? I first used YDL in 2000, it was my first time touching Linux on a PPC and I felt it quite robust. Sure people wonder why you would used YDL on a Mac that has OS X on it. For the same reason that some people have Win 98 at the same time as XP.

Flexibility. Sure you may want to use OS X day to day. But sometimes you just need to be in a true X environment. Yes you could do that otherwise in OS X, but it tends to have a high overhead (2 window managers, one sitting on top of another), and OS X is a bit quirky when it comes to certain NIX things (case sensitivity, others).

The other issue is that YDL is a GREAT solution when you want to just do number crunching. No need to run the OS X GUI, just a rock solid number crunching OS. If I remember correctly the Navy is using a bunch of XServes (G4 era) with YDL on them for this reason.

Basically it boils down to whether you want to run the OS X window manager and OS X apps, or you want to run "real" LINUX with it's app suite and it's window manager.

Besides, if you X86 zealots can have 18 differant distros why can't PPC users have a few too.

Re:I've never been that impressed with Linux on Ma

[KrispyKringle]

I'm a very recent (about a month and a half) convert to OSX. My desktop is Gentoo, which I also use on my PC at work. I run a Debian server, use RedHat far more than I'd like at work, and run OpenBSD on my own server. I've also got similar experience running FreeBSD. I used to have Windows on my desktop as well, up until late last year, simply for the software compatibility. It was only recently that I decided that everything I did in Windows could be done without significant extra effort on Linux.

I had, prior to buying my 12" Powerbook, used OS9, and found it to be quite unpleasant in that the interface is perfectly friendly, if a bit archaic-feeling, but that there seemed to be a complete and utter lack of any real features in the area of networking, no multi-user capabilities, and generally poor reliability and usability. I had also used OSX a small amount, and it seemed to be, if a bit slow (and still does feel that way, even on my Powerbook), a perfectly tolerable Unix-ish OS.

Nevertheless, I suspect I'll have a Linux desktop around for a long time (and in some respects truly do prefer it over OSX). Firstly, I found switching to a closed-source OS to be a bit of a bother. Certain minor things I'd like to change I can't, at least, without significant work. While the initial installation is easy, and getting a working desktop for basic stuff like email, web browsing, etc, I can't change certain things how I'd like. The sec ond issue I have is more anticipatory--sooner or later, I just know Apple is going to bite me in the ass with upgrades. OS 10.1 users are apparently expected to upgrade to Panther. When 10.4 comes out, am I going to be expected to plop down another $120 just like that? And finally, in terms of usability, yes, OSX has many nice features. And it's pretty. But it runs X11 apps clunkily at best, Fink and OpenDarwin ports and all are great, but there's not NEARLY the range of Free software available (e.g. the lack of a non-alpha level, non-X11 Free, or even free, word processor). Closed Broadcomm drivers mean I can't put my Airport Extreme card into passive mode. And of course, I'm simply less familiar with OSX, as well. If I decide to implement GRSec and PAX protection on my Gentoo box, I can do it. Being a bit of a security hobbyist, how do I know my Apple is as secure?

OSX is great, to be sure, for a desktop. It patches the weakness of desktop Linux and is, in many ways, a paragon for that endeavor. And XCode and all are certainly good enough that I have no real issues doing development ON OSX, though most of what I write is written FOR Linux/x86. But I'd never use it for a server, rarely for anything truly serious, certianly not on a desktop where the price of Apple hardware is prohibitive, and not simply because Aqua apps look ``a hell of a lot slicker'' :P

Overall, however, I am happy.

Re:why?

[DrMrLordX]

You do it because OSX won't install on a dead badger.

Re:Gotta ask...

[Jade E. 2]

The true beauty of slashdot: Serious discourse between people named Moofie and AssCork.

Re:In answer to the 'Why Linux' folks

[faaaz]

Actually, no. You can plug in an USB-WIFI (I use Netgear something or other) and use KisMAC. By the by, why would Linux help if the Airport specs are closed?

Performances for some classes of apps and Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you two reasons:

- Performances ! Run lmbench or do large HPC and compare. There is a real market for such type of applications, and so far, OS X is still way too far behind (lack of 64 bits address space is one thing, lack of large pages support is another, raw kernel perfs gets in the loop as well). The G5 makes a very good 64 bits machine to run linux on for such applications.

- Choice. There are other reasons to choose an OS but "it's slick". Some of us (I know some people have difficulties getting this concept) do actually value the concept of Open Source and want to actively participate for personal and/or political reasons. I prefer running Linux even if it isn't as great as OS X for doing "end user" things, but then, I also contribute in making linux better hoping we will reach that level one day. Apple definitely defines a goal to reach when it comes to GUI (though some aspects of the latest OS X versions can be criticized I beleive).

It's funny, it's always the same question popping up, some of the Apple folks themselves, on mailing lists or conference keep asking that same question, they just can't imagine somebody would want to use something else than their pet OS, but life is about choice & diversity, as much as I like what Apple produces, I'd hate to see it become a monopoly.

In short, as a linux box, a G5 is great :)

Re:why?

[killjoe]

One word. Server.

Sure you can use macosx as a server but it's shall we say quixotic. Try getting a decent build of LAMP with an array of PHP modules and you'll see what I mean. Most linux distributions have some sort of a packaging system that makes that process relatively smooth. Mac has no such thing. There is darwinports but it does not resolve dependencies (really!). Fink is incomplete, pkgsource is iffy and out dated and neither one fits into the macosx file hierarchy. COmbine that with quirky installs of perl and python and you have a recipe for disaster.

If you want a g5 as a server you'll probably be happier with netbsd or linux (too bad freebsd does not support it).

BTW anybody use debian ppc on a g5? I'd like to know what your opinion is.

[OT] How times change.

[killjoe]

Amazing what giving blacks rights did to the south. a 100% turnaround. Advocating for civil rights cost the democrats the south for decades. Now a white southerner would not vote for a democrat if jesus was on the ticket.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there are 8 RAM slots, and no one makes a chip >2 GB . . .

Re:I don't get this

[BasilBrush]

It's a myth that OSX "just plain works".
No, it's not myth. You really should try it.

In terms of appearances, it's easy to match the look and style of OSX with Linux themes, so that's not a deciding factor. If anything, you get far more choice of slick, profesional themes with Linux than with OSX.
That's the dumbest thing I've read on Slashdot today. The thing about Mac OS isn't that it looks good, it's about usability of the GUI. Linux doesn't even have universal cut'n'paste for Christ's sake, let alone a common UI standards between apps. And selecting a theme isn't going to fix that.

Mac OS X is not the OS to end all OSs

[Nice2Cats]

Terrasoft, the makers of YDL, actually have an answer to that question themselves. Their line: Yes, other laptops and desktops run fine. Therefore, we believe there must be people who want more than fine. They want the best.

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.

Limit number of OS supported

[klubar]

In our case we were already supporting 3 operating systems (OS9, Windows XP and Linux). Upgrading some of our machines to OSX would add an additional OS to support. Some of our Macs are too underpowered to run OSX. By turning those machines into servers runing YDL we can continue to get usable service out of them. My experience has been that YDL on older G3's has been extremely solid. As we are using YDL mostly for server applications, the advantages/disadvantages of the GUI don't matter. Trying to run the same services under OSX on these older machines would just swamp them. In addition to eliminating the OSX learning curve, there is the minor savings of $125 for the OS which seems to have a paid upgrade every year or so.

Is there a 64-bit JVM for it?

[btbo]

For me it would be really useful if there's also a 64-bit JVM for it.

Re:Is there a 64-bit JVM for it?

[Wesley Felter]

It's here: IBM SDK for 64-bit iSeries/pSeries.

Re:fgg

[10Ghz]

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.

I can give you one reason why I would run Linux instead of MacOS on Apple hardware: I just happen to like Linux more. I have fiddled around with OS X and it just doesn't appeal to me. Sure it has some nice things and some nice eye-candy, but still.

Apple hardware is pretty nice (espesially the laptops), so I could see myself using the hardware, but ditching the OS. Now, if only the laptops would ship with two-button mouse....

Re:Just curious (Oh so true!)

[Reverant]

And don't forget the possibility of people that leave Linux to go for OSX, then, after a while, decide Linux was a better fit for their work after all.

You can't begin to imagine how true this is. I've been wanting to get a Mac for 3 years now, mainly because of OS X. When I did (Powerbook 667), I just found that KDE does the job better, quicker, and best of all, it's Free as in Speech. I can't tweak OS X (Aqua, the Finder, Mail.app, etc) and I'm not talking about the usual lame hints and tips, I'm talking about tweaking the code to add/remove that needed/useless functionality. Not to mention bug squashing that I can't wait for Apple to solve. The Powerbook (titanium) hardware is great (the first laptop in years to have working sleep/resume, the ACPI subsystem on pc notebooks just won't work on most laptops I have tried), save the orinoco driver for the Airport card that doesn't properly support scanning and has some issues here and there.

What's custom about IBM?

[leandrod]

It is interesting that for /. crowd everything not an IBM-compatible PC is either proprietary or custom or whatever.

The truth is there is nothing more custom or proprietary to RISC than to the IBM-compatible PC, probably less. While the BIOS and such became common knowledge and the legal ability to produce x86 clones became widespread, there is nothing inherently open there: AMD-64 and IA-64 can well shed all that and become AMD and Intel exclusives. In fact it seems that IA-64 is already there.

On the other hand, SPARC is a standard, the PowerPC is joint developed, and all RISCs use open standards like OpenFirmware. And definetely IBM stuff is made in volume and widely available, if pricier than your standard white box stuff.

Re:Not Offtopic.

[RadRafe]

I don't think you'll have much luck getting linux support from Apple.

Well, that's what Terra Soft Solutions is there for. They're the one Mac reseller that preloads and supports Linux on the machines they sell. If, like the US Navy, you want Xserves running Linux, you turn to Terra Soft.

Now for an aside that really is offtopic. If all you want is an Xserve RAID for your storage needs - and you'd want one because the Xserve RAID, I believe, is surprisingly far cheaper than the competition - Apple does support its use with servers running Red Hat, Yellow Dog, and Windows 2000 and 2003.

Fan Control?

[TVC15]

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.

Re:Fan Control?

[Beetjebrak]

Current test builds of YDL have this problem solved. The fans run properly on my dual 2GHz. G5. It may just be me, but YDL seems to run the machine even quieter than OSX. And yes, they do accellerate when the system is under load or room temperature rises significantly.

Re:Fan Control?

[Wesley Felter]

Yes, there is fan control. You can even read temperature and power data out of /proc.

Sounds like crap

[polyp2000]

Respect is due dude, but i think that you are running away with yourself there , probably even trolling.

The points you make simply dont make true or are irrelevant. I also wonder if you have ever tried Linux on PPC hardware?

I have , and I can tell you that in my experience yellow dog linux runs a hell of a lot faster than a similarly specced intel box.

1) You mention that Linux is optimized for Intel, well in case you didnt know Linux is distributed as source code. the majority of the code is going to be similar for all processors. However there are optimisations contrary to your comments for PPC hardware , including stuff like altivec.Its GCC that does the real work!

Also , one of the really really nice things about Linux on PPC (specifically Yellow Dog) is that Mac hardware is considerably more predictable than x86 hardware. Generally speaking all blue G3's have the same mobo , chipset etc(accounting for minor variations) The upside of this is that a Linux distro such as Yellow dog can be tailored much better to the hardware, and eliminate many driver problems.

Again contrary to your comments.

in response to
2) Im loath to comment on this really but statements like "Linus sorts through gigabyte after gigabyte of amateurish code" and "a bunch of kids playing with source code" Make me realise that you are in fact a troll. But nonetheless I would argue, that since the source code for the Linux kernel is so open as opposed to having closed bits like you refer to in OSX, you have considerably more control over it. In fact you have so much control over it that it can be embedded in all sorts of bizarre devices such as ... ahem .. the iPod. Ask yourself this question, If linux is written by a bunch of amateur kids playing with source code, how come its so versatile and easy to port? I think that is as true a test as any on the quality of the code.

my response to
3) You make some valid points about GUI's while I agree that OSX, has a much nicer GUI than KDE or Gnome; The whole linux is not ready for the desktop argument is rapidly becoming a regurgitation from people who havent tried the latest Desktop environments. I'd also like to add that the simpler / less eyecandy / GUI with Linux is precisely the reason many people will want to run it on the box particularly as a server. In addition its a great way to make use of that tired old G3.

My comment on 4)

Yes, linux can be a pain to install software, but , and this is somewhat related to my comments on 1) my only experience with Linux on PPC is Yellow dog, and again , due to the predictability of the hardware there is no real need to build from source, you are not really going to do a much better job than Terrasoft at optimising it. Yellow Dog supports both RPM and apt-get. with these tools an update is only a couple of commands away. And they are very good at keeping it updated.

My Conclusion,

You are a Zealot and one who's stuck in his ways at that!

I personally like OSX, and the reason I want a power book , has got nothing to do with any problems I have using my linux desktop. The area which linux falls short is the lack of tools like iMovie and cubase. I also prefer Apple as a company to Microsoft.

Nick

Re:Just curious (Oh so true!)

[Anonymous Coward]

You know its possible to load OSX up under just a command line, as well as start X from here too.

Its extremely fast without the Aqua layer running, then again its even faster without X.

X is alright, but I'd be safe saying (anonymously) that even Windows has a better desktop environment than KDE. Some people use this just because they want to prove their geek status. I work with several of these folks.

As for tweaking the code, why would you need to tweak the code to a lot of this? Mail.app??? What kind of selfrespecting geek would use this -- and I'm not even talking the pretentious kind that would remove OSX and install the YellerDawg to prove it. There are several open apps that work natively that one could tweak and get better results. Finder??? It does what its supposed to do, but if you need to extend it, there are folder scripts, standard applescripts, and otherwise. You can build scripts and put them in your finder bar if you need direct access to them. If you don't like that, I have seen a few open finder replacements. Aqua? If you don't use it, ya don't use it. Oh no...its not the theme I want!!! Its more fuckingly powerful than ANYTHING you will ever find in KDE or gnome, but some geeks seem to think changing the windowing interface to something uglier, nonprofessional, and nonconforming even to itself is paramount in their requirements. Some of us OSX geeks get pissed about the brushed aluminum that has popped up, but even the nonstandards associated with this are far more standards oriented than anything you will find in the open.

Face it, you don't want a computer, you want a religion. You want folks to know you choose your religion. If it wasn't computers, you'd be shoving your B'hai Faith down peoples throats to prove that you have made an intelligent, if not somewhat irrational, choice. You don't want to be down with the Jebus people, and Allah just doesn't cut it. 72 Virgins is not a prime number or the pilgramage cuts into your excuse not to get out of your parents basement.

Maybe its just a way to shove off any women that might strike up a conversation with you about your Mac. I've found that my cute widdle iBook is as good as a dog to meet women. You've found a way to have them approach you and then repell then just as fast. Its forethought like this that keeps the geek population eternally nonlaid.

Yeah, this is probably a fucking troll. Not because of the computers, but some gatdamm mormon is going to mod this down because I didn't feel fit to include their 'faith' as either a nonstandard almost cultlike religion, or admit that they actually controll the fate of the internet and McBride will become their patron saint of litigation and technology.

Not quite:"of course linux"

[AHumbleOpinion]

... 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.

No, Linux is inherently no better for scientific apps than any other operating system. The Navy were interested in the PowerPC G4's inherent advantages when it comes to scientific applications. Their current software was also already running on a Unix platform. Yellow dog plus XServe was a pretty straight forward cost effective replacement.

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.

Terra Soft, Yellow Dog Linux's developer, is also in the business of re-selling Macs with Yellow Dog. They have been doing this for years with Apple's full cooperation and blessings. There is nothing back door about this.

Re:I don't get this

[BasilBrush]

This:

Again, you demonstrate your complete ignorance of things related to Linux.
This thread started with the usual, uninformed bashing of Linux by Macintosh users. Why don't you guys just shut up and stop bashing Linux? We don't want to hear that OS X is better--if we thought that OS X were better, we'd be running it, rather than YDL. In fact, I don't even see the Apple stories anymore because the Mac and OS X really don't interest me.
But when you do make stupid, uninformed claims about Linux, as you did, you have to expect that people answer.

... a complete reversal of the actual situation. You were the one starting the uninformed bashing. The first post in the thread merely asked a question about why pick a Mac rather than an x86 to run Linux on. You were the one who decided to started trashing another OS. The uninformed claims are being made about Mac OS by you. The claims of superiority of Linux as a desktop OS over Mac OS are plain nonsense - at least at the current state of Linux developments. Sorry I don't buy your story that you own Macs at all. You are a troll.