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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."
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.
READY.
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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
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!
Same reason someone would install Linux on an x86 with Windows pre-installed.
That, and OS X is not fully 64-bit yet.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
The true beauty of slashdot: Serious discourse between people named Moofie and AssCork.
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
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.
evil is as evil does
Because there are 8 RAM slots, and no one makes a chip >2 GB . . .
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.
For me it would be really useful if there's also a 64-bit JVM for it.
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.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
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.
Respect is due dude, but i think that you are running away with yourself there , probably even trolling.
... 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.
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
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
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp