Slashdot Mirror
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, 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.
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)
Unless, like me, you use PearPC, which works like a charm
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
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
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.
http://www.scribus.org.uk/
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"
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.
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.
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.
Amusingly enough, it should also be noted that Yellow Dog Linux doesn't run on i386 machines either. So, no, I wouldn't say "most users will be out of luck" when this is a story about YDL.
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.
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
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.