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Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 - Finally in Limited Release
sloopy writes "Terra Soft Solutions has released the long awaited and overdue next version of Yellow Dog Linux - version 4.0, for ydl.net enhanced subscribers and pre-installed on new machines, with full release to hopefully soon follow in the coming weeks. With this new release, they finally include native support for the new G5s (32-bit kernel/toolchain currently, full 64-bit soon) and continued support for the G4s and newer G3s."
I like to run linux on my iBook (which doesn't even have OS X installed), just because it's the easiest way to have a consistent experience between computers (same softs, same config, same everything) . I also prefer lots of things of GNU/Linux over OS X, even customized OS X.
blah
Can any YDL advocates provide some insight as to why they prefer this over OSX?
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
i'm a linux user. period.
i want a nice piece of mobile hardware, and a 1ghz 12" ibook fit the bill.
what's so difficult to understand about that?
I gave OS X a chance, and after 3 months, I wiped the system and put crux on it. OS X has a pretty face, and if you are in the artsy fartsy croud, then i imagine it's wonderful to impress your friends with transparency, and a gui that's like a video game.
but i need a fast CLI that behaves like the x86 counterpart, i need fluxbox, a lightweight minimalist gui, i need a browser, and something to play my mp3s.
even on my brand new ibook, os x was sluggish...i can't but compare it to online FPS gaming....sure you are getting 175 frames per second locally, but there's this thing called LAG which ruins the whole experience. OS X is laggy. I never had to wait for similar thing in linux, or xp or even os-9, why should i have to start waiting now?
First off, who the hell is modding these posts offtopic?
Secondly, yes, I prefer Gentoo PPC to Yellow Dog as well. However, I wouldn't recommend it to very many people I know, just because it has a significantly higher knowledge requirement and learning curve. While I have no problem with that (and run Gentoo on my x86 stuff also) and like source-based stuff, it's definitely handy that there's a binary distro out there too.
Also, I can only assume that your comparison was based on the old version of YDL, which is pretty crufty by now.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I once wrote an article which summarises my experience with Linux on Apple hardware. It was published on OSNews. It's a little dated now (I wrote it a little over a year ago), but it offers my opinion on Yellow Dog Linux, which was overwhelmingly positive. Check it out here.
--Jon
Cleanstick.org: Dumb weblog about nothing
Its not clear if the G3 PB line is supported; it might be nice to get this for the Pismo line which can be a hair too slow for OS.X.
Any experience out there?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Finally! I have long awaited this release as YDL3 was becoming slightly dated. A lot of people ask, why Linux when I can already use my sleek powerbook to run X applications and hell even apt-get software from Fink's binary repository. The answer is the same to why someone would want to run Linux on an x86 machine. Why run linux when you could just use cgywin?
:D).
MacOS X does Just Work, but sometimes it doesn't work the way I want it too. Sometimes I want to be able to compile any package and KNOW that it is going to work. Sometimes I want a pure linux development environment, and I am willing to take in a few of the caveats (ie. improper pmud).
Othertimes I just feel mired by a sleek GUI when I know how quickly I can execute the same task with a full linux environment.
Linux on apple hardware is a great thing (don't dis it until you try it
transmission_err
I've have some powerbook owners who would like to be able to run Yellowdog but off of an external Firewire drive. Last I checked Yellowdog did not support this. Does anybody know what the status is on this feature.
Even though having a dual boot system is fairly safe "if you know what you are doing" there are people who don't want to muck with their OS X disk.
Yep, I run YDL on an iBook 500 (lucky me, hw modem, but its still flakey compared to MacOS 9-X) generally because I wanted a more widely supported UNIX-like install for development, i.e. avoiding hoop jumping that used to be so common with earlier OSX releases, but are now, mostly, history...
Secondly, YDL can run a bit faster than OSX on this hw if I use a lighter wm/desktop e.g. fluxbox, xfce, etc. In which case it can be a little faster. That being said my Pismo(also a 500) runs OSX faster than the ibook and the only real hw diff is the 66M v. 100M bus...
Downsides: modem support is not very good(probably limited hw doc access), as is power management support(probably same as with modem), and airport support isn't too hot either(i.e. I end up doing quite a bit of manual configuring...), sound support is well, basically crap, and DVD playback non-existant...(although these last 2 are extremely minor issues for me as this system is not really for gaming or video watching...)
In fact with recent OSX releases I have been seriously considering moving back to OSX, but am leery of dealing with all the multimeg updates(modem)... installing fink(or whatever, again multimeg + modem ick) But then I'd have good modem support, power management, sound, and airport config again(or at least in a non-manual, or not as manual sort of way...)
Newer iBooks/Powerbooks: er... isn't there a conexant(? binary) driver for the sw/USB modem? I've heard that it introduces potential stability problems, but I've never encountered them...
YDL itself: at the time it installed with the fewest problems v. debian/slackintosh/suse and seemed like it would receive the most attention, although it now seems that debian or gentoo would be as good alternatives if you have any clue, but I guess that you wouldn't be attempting to run linux if you didnt... I'd also hazard that maybe a Darwin based distro would be even better as the kernel would likely have better support for hw, maybe, but I've never really investigated myself as I'd rather just get all the goodies and run OSX if I was going to bother with a Darwin base...
At least if you fight with dependencies, you actually know what the dependencies are. This can be very helpful when pushing it out to many machines or when you find out that a library is buggy/exploitable.
There is just one point I'd like to comment on: I thought the achillies heal of linux is the difficult/multivariation/infinitely configurable interface.
I think you thought wrong. Actually it is one of linux' greatest strength and one of the main reasons I prefer it over OSX that you can actually have the interface you like. Wether it be simply the shell, something like ion, a lightweight wm like fluxbox or a complete desktop environment like gnome and kde. Choice is a nice thing to have and the good thing is, at least the two DEs mentioned aren't any more difficult then OSX imho.
How about for relatively recent [emphasis added] Apple hardware that will run OS X poorly, like my aging 350MHz iMac? ... just last night I was looking into converting the little blue gumball to Linux.
According to EveryMac, your computer was released 10/5/99 - that's five years give or take a few weeks. How is that relatively recent when Apple only started selling Macs 20 years ago?
The list price was $999 which means you have gotten core computer usage for ~$200 a year, or less than $0.55 a day. Perhaps it is time to upgrade to a system that DOES run OS X.
Did you know about this or this? Both are in the range of your existing investment - AND YOU GET A NEW APPLE COMPUTER!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I used to run gentoo on x86 (no, I don't care about the optimization, I just liked gentoo's system for controlling daemons and whatnot ) -- overall I ran linux of some sort or another for a few years and was pretty comfortable with it.
I moved to OS X after a linux hardware-incompatibility disaster and by and large I've never looked back. The thing is, I do simulation work in my free time that requires serious opengl and without hardware acceleration I'm SOL. Going mac made sense anyhow, since by day I'm a graphic designer and have always been on Macs, or at least since about '92. Until OS X I didn't consider the Mac to be a valid development platform, and until 10.2 I didn't consider OS X to be a valid system at all for general use )
What I'm curious about is wether live cds for PPC are available. I had heard about a gentoo ppc livecd but I couldn't actually *find* it.
I want to see what's happened in the few years I've been away and I'd like to see the level of hardware support. yes, I know that for my 12" PB support's going to suck, but really I just want to *see*.
Consider this an appeal for nostalgia.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Unfair comparision between YDL and OSX. For YDL, you choose what "it" you want to work. For OSX, Apple chooses for you.
Sure, but idiots with enough money to buy an iBook are one of the best markets there is! I say the Yellow Dog Linux guys are onto something there.
Before buying an iBook in November I used Debian/x86 for years as my primary environment. I am thinking of going to a dual-boot+MoL environment, but am holding off because of having a small-ish (30GB) hard drive. What would be the disk requirements for a minimal install + X (no KDE or Gnome for now) + openoffice.org? Also, what the pros and cons of YDL versus Debian? I like the Debian way of doing things (huge selection of packages that tend to work and be consistent), but I have no idea about its support for Macs (other than that packages seem to be fairly widely availible).
tangent to the argument, but to most of us mac users, your imac isn't that old. It's definitely at it's tail end, and thank god for linux, that can add more life, but many mac users are doing fine on 4 or 5 year old machines, many without any major upgrades.
My beige G3 with an upgraded CPU sits on my room mates desk where it gets 4 or more hours use a night.
My G4 tower is still my editing station. It has undergone numerous upgrades from the day it arrived as a stock G4/400, but professional editing needs are a bit out of the norm.
My main computer is my G4 Titanium laptop.
The only real reason I have to get anything new is techno lust. And the thought that I can keep going with my older hardware with a pared down linux system is very comforting.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
you could also run x11 and a lightweight window manager and kill off aqua. but... yeah, my solution to a slow running mac is either netBSD or WDL (depending on the age of the machine. those old macintosh classic's run BSD, old g3's run YDL pretty well, but kde is only a touch faster than aqua - icewm is a better solution, i've found.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
I don't understand the opinion "why use Linux when one can run most of the linux apps in Mac OS X". Sure it's night and day from Pre-OSX but my experience is that most FLOSS applications (especially those with a GUI) work a lot worse on Mac OS X than on Linux (and to me that's logical, of course more development time goes into the linux versions than the mac ports).
Mainstream FLOSS applications like Firefox, dcgui and X-Chat performs a lot worse (slower, less stable, etc.) on Mac OS X than Linux. Atleast that is my experience.
And if one wants to run Photoshop and other commercial applications; use Mac-on-Linux.
On the other hand I understand that lots of people like Mac OS X, it's a well designed OS.
After about 40 seconds (on a dual-1.8GHz G5 machine), you get to the Yellow Dog welcome screen where you can log in as a user, reboot, choose the desktop environment, and the like. For what it's worth, OSX boots in a very impressive 15 seconds on the same machine.