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Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 Released
worm eater writes "On September 29, Terra Soft Solutions delivered the final release of Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 to their CD manufacturer. It is currently available for download by ydl.net subscribers. Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 is built upon Fedora Core 2, offering both KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.6.0 desktops with an all new presentation for both the Installer and post-installed desktop environment. Expanded USB support includes many cameras, printers, adapters, and storage devices. FireWire support is now built-in with bootable FireWire made possible through manual configuration. Mac-On-Linux offers the ability to run Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and now offers automatic network configuration."
Hmmm... Yellow dog linux, the distro for computers named after a red fruit.
What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
Hmmm, for some reason I have the feeling there is some sort of corelation between the naming of "Red Hat" and "Yellow Dog" ...
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
I have to say I'm also struggling to work out what niche Linux for OS X machines fills. If you want Linux, there's cheaper hardware to run it on, and I'd expect more of the exotic stuff to work properly. If you want a Mac experience, Linux probably isn't going to deliver. If you want un*x plus cuddly Mac interface, I thought that was the whole point of OS X....
Virtually serving coffee
LinuxPPC is a great option for older Macs with pre-OSX or pre-Panther. With one of many WM themes, you can approximate the latest Mac experience without shelling out $150.
It should be noted that Mac-on-Linux still doesn't run on i386 hardware - so if your goal is to run OS X or some other OS made for PPC, most users will be out of luck.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Till someone does something about the Airport Extreme problem, Linux is worthless on the new Powerbooks. (And I know it's BoardCom who isn't cooperating)
On the other hand, have you seen the laptop market recently? Trying to find a light, well made laptop with a DVD writer and a decent screen is next to impossible - you can get badly made crap from Dell (where the drivers all work) or a Thinkpad from IBM (with a ATI card! aargh! no working 3d!).
In that environment a powerbook running Linux seems like a pretty good idea to me, at least for those that are perfectly happy with Linux and dont want to change tyvm.
Beep beep.
First of all, it's nice that there are now a lot of distributions catering to different needs from which to choose from.
There's mandrake (yes mandrake ppc is still active), yellow dog, ubuntu, crux, debian, gentoo.
And to all those complaining about linux on ppc:
1. Nobody forces you to use it.
2. Believe it or not, but some people don't think OSX is their favorite OS.
3. Linux offers way more choice then OSX.
4. There are other ppc computers then just Apples.
5. It may not be a weired idea to use linux on a server and there are servers with ppc.
Linux fulfills the same niche on PPC it does on Windows: people are stuck with some hardware and they don't like the operating system on it. Maybe they bought an OS X machine believing that they would get a "UNIX workstation with a nicer GUI" and discovered that it didn't fit their needs after all. Maybe they discovered that their laptop is slower than they'd like it to be with OS X. Maybe they want different software that's better supported under Linux.
Also, in some niches, it can be worth buying Apple hardware for specific design features. For example, even though PC panel computers have been around for many years, the new iMac is particularly cheap and widely available because it is targeted at the mass market. And Apple's iBooks are a decent compromise as entry-level laptops. And many Apple designs just look nice, and installing YDL is a lot easier than replacing the motherboard.
So, until Apple starts shipping PPC hardware without an OS or with Linux preinstalled, Linux on Apple hardware won't become a mainstream choice. But there are situations where it makes sense.
That is not entirely true.
;-)
I, for one, do not quite like the inerface of MacOS or OSX. But when I get the opportunity to buy cheap hardware, I would not like to let it pass.
Often, cheap Macs come off for sale on the university's mailing lists. In such cases, I find it easier to just buy these and install Linux on them. It's also easier for me simply because it's an interface I'm quite familiar and comfortable with.
I'm sure there are quite a few users like me out there. Not to beat the looks I get when I show Mac fanatics ppcs running Linux - and besides, a Mac looks cool
Why? Clearly they're looking ahead.
As Bill "I didn't ever say 640K oughta be enough for anyone, what you see on your BIOS setup is purely your imagination" Gates recently said, in several years time there will only be two OSes - Windows and Linux.
So, all us Mac users^B^B^B^B^B fanboys will then need another OS to run our beautiful style-over-substance-hardware with, once Mac OS X suddenly disappears from existence.
I have to say I'm also struggling to work out what niche Linux for OS X machines fills. If you want Linux, there's cheaper hardware to run it on, and I'd expect more of the exotic stuff to work properly
Personally, I find the early iMacs and B&W G3s pretty lacklustre on OSX. Running a PPC distro like Debian gives them the speed they used to have in OS9, with an operating system that hasn't been abandoned.
For anything quicker I'm with you, though.
I can't decide how ironic that post is intended to be, but what I'm getting from all the responses is that Linux for PPC is an aid to recycling old Macs, or maybe getting a cheap and small laptop, and that it has no pretensions of filling any mainstream niche. And why not (hey, I'm still using an Acorn for my DTP!), but I do wonder what this means for drivers, libraries and so on. Does, say, Xine work?
Virtually serving coffee
The cheaper hardware is not necessarily as good, and OS X is not Free Software. I use Gentoo on an iBook.
a powerbook running linux will not have a working 3d thanks to nvidia.
Yeah, damn straight, I'm so sick of the lack of nvidia support for my powerbook's radeon
http://www.scribus.org.uk/
Commercial support.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Did you just suggest that the Linux section of Slashdot is not the place to talk about a Linux release? Certainly that can't be! ;)
I think he was trying to suggest that it wasn't really worthy of the front page.
Not all of us are driven to buy the cheapest option available. Some of us buy the snappier suits, the fancier cars, the better quality furniture, and the more stylish laptops.
Apple produces the most stylish laptop in the market. The benefit of running Linux is that I'm not confined to x86; I was able to jump to Apple hardware without changing my software.
Other than that I generally agree with this comment.
Another thing speaking in advantage for Linux on Macs is that MacOS X just won't run with usable performance on older Macs, and MacOS pre-X is an abomination and not an option, IMO. Granted, YDL/Fedora Core are pretty hefty GNOME/KDE based distros, but they still get away with less hardware grunt than MacOS X, and as for Linux in general there are leaner PPC distros (here is a rather new example).
BTW...
Bother!
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Toshiba. Good line of laptops, with support for pretty much everything bar their proprietary SD card readers. Even 3D with Nvidia (proprietary, yes, closed source, yes, working ... yes).
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
My Powerbook 54 17" came with an NVidia. I didn't want it, but thats what it came with.
3D isn't so much of an issue for me; I spend my life in rxvts, but what IS an issue for me is dual display support. Without that, its pretty well useless.
I can do without the airport extreme support (Come on, dragging a cable over 5 metres is not such a big deal) but the lack of a xinerama/dual head capable nv driver is problematic for me.
The irony of this whole story is that today I wiped Debian Linux off my powerbook and rebuild my machine to use all 60GB of disk space for OSX for exactly these reasons.
I wonder if YDL have solved the outstanding issues with the nv driver and extreme?
Does anyone know of any equivalent to MOL that runs on OS X? I would like to be able to run beta releases of OS X, old versions of MacOS (for games) and various UNIX distributions (which I often need to write about) on my PowerBook without rebooting or resorting to VirtualPC (which, as of version 6, didn't boot Fedora Core 2. I don't know if version 7 does).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You're quite simply.. wrong.. The powerbooks either come with an nvidia geforce fx or a radeon mobility. I personally have a mobility 9600.
Fine, get an inexpensive 802.11g card and stick it in the pcmcia slot, or get a usb 802.11g reader that's supported. I wouldn't say it's useless just because some hardware is not supported.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
The $150 isn't what stops me from trying something like Yellow Dog. It's the lack of vendor software builds such as Oracle, Sybase, etc.
As a developer, I can get free/cheap developer kits on x86 Linux or Windows from any major vendor. But when it comes to POWER, SPARC, or other OS's you need to buy everything, if it's available at all.
That really is a shame -- especially the limited AMD64 support in some cases.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There are on problems with software, because Debian and Gentoo both have very good ppc support (and think that no other distro has so much avaiable packages as these two), and yes xine, mplayer, firefox , and so on, all works..
About drivers you've got the same problem as in linux x86 there's no support for the latest hardware (wireless, and so on), nvidia doesn't make linux drivers (i think it's apple fault because nvidia says that the ppc platform is apple responsability, maybe they have some kind of agreement), ati also don't make drivers, but the dri project has 3d drivers for every chip until 9200 (this means the lastest ibooks still have 3d)..
About libraries, i never had any kind of trouble (maybe you have special needs, but i don't think there will be any kind of problem).
YDL 3 and 4 didn't ship with a usable Java distribution, but IBM offers a great 1.4.2 version one here: https://www6.software.ibm.com/dl/lxdk/lxdk-p.
This is going to start another of those "But why leave the beautiful Mac OS X for Linux" flame wars, isn't it?
Thank God that is, I just happened to have tons of fresh pop corn near by, and nothing interest to watch. This will do nicely.
I don't get the impression from reading Terrasoft's site that this is the last release of Yellow Dog, but reading that article text certainly gave off the impression. Might want to edit that a bit. "Final master for YDL 4.0" perhaps?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Actually I am awaiting a G-5 Ibook to run YD.. What I have seen from YD I am impressed. I am a long time RedHatter so I feel at home with YD. I really like the contribution they have made to the hell of packagemanegement with YUM, it is, IMHO, the only reason why RH9.0 users have been able to migrate their systems to Fedora without a major problem (that of RHN being unavailable). Don't get me wrong, I like OSX and the Aqua gimmicks are cute but I am an old dog and I chew my bone on KDE...
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
(Insert rant about people needing to support Mac developers because the market is so tiny in the space below.)
~~~
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I got through the YDL website and just found out that : Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 offers 32-bit support for USB-G3s, G4s, G5 Power Macs. If I decided to buy a G5, I would expect it to work in 64-bit mode, not just in 32-bit mode. Some kind of strange since the G5 64-bit instruction set seems to be working with Linux. I found at IBM DevelopperWorks how to set up a 64-bit mode (Y-HPC Kernel), but it still seems to be beta...
Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another? - Bertold Brecht
I have started yellowdoglinux.org to create a forum for yellowdog users. Right now it is simply a forum, but there will be future expansion. I would like to invite novice and experienced linux users to join.
http://yellowdoglinux.org/forum
Well i had two reasons and a half to switch.
1) after less than six month of my purchase of a top of the line titanium II OSX 10.2 came out and there was no discount for me.
2) I have an older mac and a pc. I installed debian and i have a unified enviroment to work with.
2.5) more packages in Debian than in Fink.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
So... where is it?
A) What performance increases am I likely to see running YDL (real numbers, not "OMFG it is liek teh fastest")?
B) Never having used Mac-on-Linux, would I really be able to squeeze YDL and MOL onto my measely 20 Gig drive? I currently only have a couple gigs left, but that is mainly due to installing fink and darwinports to get linux functionality. What is the performance of MOL? Better than VPC performance I would hope (since there is no endian conversion).
I'm just a little leary of wiping my iBook, which is my primary machine, to install YDL if I'm not going to see a significant performance gain and cannot reasonably run my Mac apps when I need to.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
The changelog of recent Mac-On-Linux releases show that the developer is moving toward a release that will build and run on both Linux and OS X. The latest development snapshot compiles cleanly on 10.3, but fails to run (perhaps it's just my inexperience that prevents it from running). I've seen reports in the Mac-On-Linux mailing lists that other users have gotten Mac OS 9.1 to run in MOL on OS X 10.2.
There are other options too for pre-installed laptops with full customer application support: Element Computers
They are a linux only vendor and were favorably reviewed. They've been featured on slasdot a couple of times.
What you want is out there, your just not going to get it from the Dell+Gateway+HP+Apple world.......and why should you? They're not linux vendors. Remember a purchase from them increases demand for a Windows/Apple operating system, a purchase from a linux retailer increases support for Linux OS....no matter what you choose to install afterwards. :)
Actually, that's not so true any longer; vrs 4 does not support pre-USB macs. If you want to run YDL on a beige G3 (or older model) you'll have to snatch up the last copies of vrs 3.x, while they last.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Ouch! Those cost a bundle. $775usd for the board with 1ghz proc and $1500 for:
* Nexus Vivid Blue case w/ 330W psu (Screwless design for easy future modifications)
* Pegasos II Mainboard and Motorola G4 Processor @ 1Ghz
* ATI Radeon 9200 SE 128MB Graphics card
* 40GB Hard Disk Drive
* 256MB (DDR256) PC2100 RAM
* Standard Keyboard and Mouse
* Standard CDRW drive
Software:
* MorphOS 1.4 pre-installed
* Debian pre-installed
* Mac on Linux packages installed
* Super bundle installed
Ok, now Apple's offerings:
1.25GHz G4 eMac - $800
1.6GHz G5 iMac - $1300
Dual Proc 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac - $2000
Well, value for money, I know what I'd pick.
The Linux Incompatibility List would benefit from the addition of specific makes and models, although do describe the incompatibility accurately so that people don't think that the hardware is completely incompatible with Linux, when it is really only one portion of it that does not make the hardware useless.
Thanks!
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
12'' PBs have no PCMCIA slots. Also, yes, it is useless. People in the real world use wireless if they have it. The point being, no cables. If you are forced to be at a table where there is a network connection, the point of a modern laptop is lost.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
Thinkpad from IBM (with a ATI card! aargh! no working 3d!).
My Thinkpad T40 has a Radeon M9000 and I have working 3D.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
We currently have all our old PCs (PI's and PII's) net booted to linux using rdesktop to run windows apps. We could just as easily have them net-booted, connected to a Yellow Dog Terminal Server and running both rdesktop and MacOnLinux - the best of both worlds - If it works.
Right now we have hundreds of computers net-booting linux, and it looks like the direction we are headed for upgrade, security and maintenance cost reasons. I'd skip the middle-man in a heart-beat if Apple would come out with a Tiger Terminal Server Edition. In fact, I mentioned that to the Apple guys during a feedback session at WWDC and got quite a lot of applause and reaction. Hell, I'd buy an Xserve for home and TS my family Macs into it if they came out with one.
I'd much rather maintain an Xserve farm running Terminal Services than have to manage software and security on hundreds of workstations. I won't mention the name of the company, but we had a piece of software that was notoriously hard to install and would only work well on windows (in spite of what we were told and demoed when we bought it). Unfortunately, most of the 30 or 40 labs we wanted to run it in are mac labs. Our solution was to buy a Windows Terminal Server and us Remote Desktop from the macs. It worked like a charm. I now have ONE machine to upgrade, patch secure, backup and otherwise manage instead of countless many. I want the same thing with some of our mac software. If this works as advertised it will open new horizons for us and breath life into all those old-but-functioning machines.
Now, if I can only get linux to run on a Color Classic.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Did you just suggest that the Linux section of Slashdot is not the place to talk about a Linux release? Certainly that can't be! ;)
It should be obvious that Slashdot is not an appropriate forum for such discussions. After all, there's absolutely no mention of Bush, Iraq, WMDs or Kerry in either the summary *or* the article text!
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Macs haven't had model numbers for eight years. What exactly is a PowerBook 54?
The local book shop. A decent linux manual includes the distro, you know. Or google-froogle for.. 'mailorder linux' ? oi voilà.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
pedant. It was a typo. :P
"...and you don't hint pretentiously that you may be speaking for dozens of other people instead of just yourself."
As a matter of fact, I do happen to know quite a lot of people who consider Mac OS and OSX's UI to be despicable, quite unintuitive and awfully painful to use.
*shrug*
Just because you do not agree with my point of view need not mean there aren't others who don't.
It's not the point of view that upsets me, it's the "I, for one" meme. You missed the point of my rant, I'm afraid... I could not care less whether you or your friends like or dislike OS X, but when you say "I, for one" you sound like a jerk, and it's becoming more and more common on messageboards like this one.
Comment of the year
LinuxPPC is a great option for older Macs with pre-OSX or pre-Panther. With one of many WM themes, you can approximate the latest Mac experience without shelling out $150.
Even relatively young Macs can be horribly slow running OSX... Like the last of the CRT iMacs (2001) and the first few dual-usb iBooks (2001-2002) and maybe the Pismo (haven't tried that one.) Pather is really barely acceptable on most G3's, even with a lot of RAM it's horribly sluggish. My 500mhz iBook spends most of its time in OS9, because Pather just can't give acceptable performance with higher-end apps like Flash, Photoshop and Virtual PC (all of which run fine in 9.)
I'm not bashing OSX, I would never consider anything but Panther on my G5, but it really has left some relatively recent machines behind. I just might install Yellow Dog on the iBook to breathe some more life into it...
my password is private, but unchanged.
I did get the point of your rant - I was merely pointing out that maybe it does have a point, atleast in some cases.
I, for one, think thou art taking this far too seriously =)
ANd is Oracle and Sybase available on MacOSX?
I dont think so.
Aqua is not as configurable as X and KDE or Gnome. Its also proprietary while the gui's of Unix are open.
Linux flies on macs and has more software available than MacOSX.
Source builds may not compile on BSD or MacOSX. I have noticed this and gave running Gldoom on FreeBSD.
http://saveie6.com/
I noticed you forgot all about where I mentioned the USB ports. Try again.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
I don't know about Sybase, but there are developer previews for OS X of Oracle9i and 10g. I don't know about any problems with them but since they are developer previews, some things might not work quite right yet. As OS X grows in popularity with the target audience of a software package, and proves its worth for serious computing, there will probably be more support for it in the future.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
You can try and get SheepShaver working, but I haven't been very successful. OS X isn't supported, though.
100% 64bit for G5s is one. 10.3 Panther is somewhat 64bit, but there are caveats that won't be fully addressed until Tiger (10.4) is released. Or, you can use YDL now and get all the 64bit goodness from the G5 CPU available.
--
$tar -xvf
10 MB? Not that I know of. Can your bandwith handle...
Damn Small Linux (DSL) less than 50 MB?
Feather Linux less than 64 MB?
and Puppy Linux less than 50 MB (yes, in(on?) a ramdisk. needs 48M RAM min 128M Ram optimal. Fast you ask? andiamo momma.)In fairness, both DSL and Feather linux can be booted with the knoppix toram boot line option and should be just as fast as Puppy Linux. Which is not knoppix/debian based as DSL and Feather are.
Since this is really offtopic, I won't give links but google for these distros any how.There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
How well does it work? And which drivers are you using?
(Well enough to play NWN, or well enough to do basic stuff?)
Beep beep.
Sybase Announces Availability of Enterprise RDBMS on MAC OS X Panther
Oracle Announces Plans to Make Oracle 10g Technology Available to Apple Developers. Oracle Database 10g Early Adopters Release 2 (10.1.0.3) for Apple Mac OS X
I doubt Linux has more software available than Mac OS X. After all, lots of "Linux" apps easily port to Mac OS X. Some are an easy re-compile or packages may already be available (Fink, DarwinPorts, Gentoo Portage trees too). There are relatively few that are Linux only or even fewer that are only available for Linux on PowerPC in binary form. Mac OS X, on the other hand, has many more software titles available written against Cocoa or Carbon.I thought about yellow dog on my aluminum G4 until I noticed that the sound probably won't work along with sleep, my airport extreme, the modem, external video...
And you want it to run on a G5 ibook? Try 4 years after it comes out.
You can run kde on darwin, you know... You probably won't have any issues with sound either.
Have you had any success with using a USB wireless dongle under Linux?
... for me, getting it to work at all took quite a bit of googling, cursing, and trusting directions (conditionally) until I found a combination of driver and settings that worked. But when I upgraded a few months later to a different version of Knoppix, figuring the pain would be less the 2nd time around, I never could get that to work again. (And the Belkin is one of the few USB dongles that's reputed to work well with Linux. I know it *can* work, since I witnessed it, but the frustration isn't worth it IMO.)
I briefly had a (chunky, ugly, but so what) Belkin one working with a hard-drive installed Knoppix system (3.1? 3.2?)
Have you by chance encountered a USB dongle natively (and without tweaking) supported by Yellow Dog, or any other Linux distro? If so, which one?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
(1) You can run YDL without a GUI so there are more CPU cycles for your app.s html?tid=137
(2) For some applications PPC has a non-trivial computational advantage over x86, i.e. computation is a good match for Altivec.
For an example the US Navy's imaging equipment http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/08/07/1258203.
How well does it work?
Tuxracer runs fine. Haven't really tried too much.
And which drivers are you using?
The Free ones, I think, with DRI support.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I, for one, welcome our memetic overlords!
I use A/UX, you insensitive clod!
English is easier said than done.