Terra Soft Offers Linux-booting iPods, FW Drives

Kai Staats of Terra Soft writes "We are pleased to now offer support for bootable iPods and FireWire drives, enabling a highly portable Linux on PowerPC environment." Note that this is about booting a Macintosh into Linux, not running Linux on the iPod.

Comments

Just hardware, no apple OS.

[ClickWir]

Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more ;)" he said.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[schestowitz]

When he starts running wine on that 'Mac', will he then say "obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a PC any more"?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[KZigurs]

Wise remark. Like it or not - apple hw, without max os x isn't a mac.

It's just another linux machine with that horrible X thing on it. :P

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[JabberWokky]

Wine does not work on a non-intel system. It doesn't handle different opcodes, only a different API. There are solutions for running Windows on PPC, both closed and open source, but Wine is not one of them.

--
Evan

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[elleomea]

You can make use of WINE in conjunction with QEMU to achieve execution of x86 Windows binaries on a PPC.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[RevAaron]

Wise remark. Like it or not - apple hw, without max os x isn't a mac.

It's just another linux machine with that horrible X thing on it. :P

Like it or not, but that isn't the case.

Recently, I've been considering buying a new laptop. I last had an iBook G3/500, recently bequethed to my girlfriend, with me using a PDA/handheld as my main computer for the last year or so. So, thinking about getting another full laptop, I've been shopping around. But since I've had my fill of OS X, I was looking at PCs too, since I'd probably be fine on a PC running Windows or Linux. But I keep coming back to the Macs. With the quality of hardware, the size/weight factor it's hard to find a notebook of comparable price, one that isn't a big piece of junk.

Saying that a Mac without OS X isn't a Mac just isn't true. There's more to a Mac than software. Most folks who think so have never used a Mac, not for any long period of time. Similarily, a PC running OS X isn't a Mac. Maybe an x86 machine produced by Apple could make it as one, though.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Jesus_666]

The question is, how good does it work? On rare occasions I do need to run Win software on my Mac - and emulating Windows XP an a G4 iBook with a mere 256 MiB of RAM is mainly an exercise in waiting...

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[lowrydr310]

Is there anything better about running Linux on a PowerPC based system as opposed to an x86 system? Do people really go out and spend big bucks on Apple hardware just to run Linux?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[northcat]

Yes, and that's exactly why WINE Is Not an Emulator. But whenever you say that on slashdot, the language nazis wake up and start giving lectures about why WINE is an emulator. FFS, the WINE developers *themselves* say that WINE is not an emulator.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[WinterSolstice]

It works awfully. Currently, I have had no success with anything more complicated than Calc.

YMMV.

-WS

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The question is, how good does it work?"

Nope, the question should be how well does it work? Sigh.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[nickos]

Linux has always been designed for the x86 platform first and then ported to other platforms later. That said, PowerPC has a much nicer architecture than x86 (heck, almost anything is better than x86 - the only thing in the x86's favour is that commodity PCs use it). Also, if you're looking at running Linux on a laptop, PPC based machines tend to have a better battery life for their level of performance...

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[grahamlee]

Wine does not work on a non-intel system.

Mind if I call bullshit?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Alan Partridge]

I've been shopping for a new laptop for my girlfriend (she needs WiFi, Bluetooth, MS Office and SPSS, basically) and it's been an extremely frustrating experience trying to track down a WinTel laptop with integrated BT for a reasonable price. With a Mac laptopo you can just BTO with internal BT and still keep the price on the ground. The whole experience has taught me what I had forgotten about WinTel - you can have anything you want as long as it's on the menu.

And the menu is McDonalds crap.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[karmatic]

That would be darwine, not wine.

One may be a derivitive of the other, but they are still different products, for different uses, by different groups of people.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Big bucks? Show me where else I can buy a 15" laptop for $2000 that isn't made of plastic. Particularly in the mobile arena Apple is very competitive on price.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see:
+ Opeteron kicks PowerPC's ass on servers
+ Pentium-M kicks PowerPC's ass on laptops (much better battery life and speed)
+ Athlon/P4 kicks PowerPC's ass on price

What's so good about PowerPC when it consistantly comes in 2nd or 3rd place in most (non-embedded) markets?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

The religion of SteveJobs? You can't worship him *and* Linus at the same time... they are mutually exclusive! ;)

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Off the top of my head, assembly coding sucks on x86. MS are also using PowerPCs in their new XBox, a mchine where they are deeply concerned about price/performance.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[DrXym]

However it may be possible to build and link to winelib on non-x86 systems. This requires of course that every DLL you need can be built natively but at least that much can be done.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[DrXym]

Well yes, it is bullshit. Darwine allows you to compile Win32 source and link against Winelib. It does not allow you to run x86 binaries on the PPC. Maybe it will some day but not yet.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[amigabill]

>Wine does not work on a non-intel system. It
>doesn't handle different opcodes, only a different
>API. There are solutions for running Windows on
>PPC, both closed and open source, but Wine is not
>one of them.

But isn't it only a matter of time before we see a "Mine" (AKA Mine Is Not an Emulator) implementing the MacOS API under LinuxPPC the same way Wine does Windows API for LinuxX86? :)

I'd actually find such a thing useful, as I have a PPC computer next to my x86 PC. Run TaxCut or TurboTax for Mac, perhaps play some Mac games that don't have Linux ports, maybe iTunes or iDVD... (My PPC computer is not a Mac hardware...)

Sure, there's MacOnLinux for LinuxPPC, but I'd rather only run a single OS on each machine at a time rather than multiple ones via virtual machines...

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

People mainly use compilers these days. Also x86's roots is an assembly designed to be used by mortals. PowerPC's roots is an assembly that is easy to write a compiler for. It's mearly an opinion, not a fact, that you think PPC asm is "better" than x86 asm.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

> assembly coding sucks on x86

Funny how Linus bitches about PowerPC assembly but yet thinks x86 is great. And he's one of the few people that gives a damn.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Afrosheen]

My head just exploded at the irony of a Mac user complaining about lack of choice in the Wintel world, hardware-wise.

It hurts, make it stop!

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[HuguesT]

Wintel hardware is like US TV. More than a hundred channels, and nothing on.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[grahamlee]

You appear to have left your NT4/PPC install media at home ;-). Darwine can run Win32/PPC binaries.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Leo McGarry]

Saying that a Mac without OS X isn't a Mac just isn't true.

It is, though. If you want to buy a computer made by Apple, that's fine, but unless you're running Mac OS X on it, don't call it a Mac. Because it most definitely is not.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[wooger]

You are smoking crack-

All Apple laptops have piss poor battery life compared to modern Pentium M laptops.

The Pentium M is so much faster than a G4 its embarrassing.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Gilmoure]

Man, I hate to run OSX with less than 512MB RAM. Upgrade! Knock over a lick-her store or something, if you need the cash. You can never be too thin or have too much RAM!

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[1u3hr]

unless you're running Mac OS X on it, don't call it a Mac. Because it most definitely is not.

"A Mac[intosh]" is a piece of hardware. "Mac OS[X]" is software. If you buy an iMac or Mac mini, and boot to Yellow Dog, you don't have "a Yellow Dog", you have "a Mac running Yellow Dog".

There are several Mac OS emulators (mostly for OS7) I can run on my PC, even full screen, (not to mention the PearPC for OSX). I still have a PC, not a Mac.

Perhaps instead of just stating it as a fact, you could explain why the above is wrong.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Alan Partridge]

Perfectly succint, exactly so.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which successfully argues that darwine runs windows software, but fails in the argument that it has any use, since no software exists for Win32/PPC you would actually need emulated (to my mind at least).

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[r_jensen11]

Oh, but he could still possibly emulate programs designed for OSX, like MS Office (At least, the Mac version...).

What I don't get is, why don't people see that he's using an Apple, but not using a Mac? Apple is the hardware, Mac is the software....

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[iminplaya]

That would be a cool experiment. Take a mac or a pc and run a bunch of emulators on top of one another until you emulate every(major) OS out there until you come full circle to emulating the original system on top of all the others. For instance, mac to linux to windows to linux back to mac. Could it work?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[iminplaya]

Either way it still beats the hell out of Intel.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[mboverload]

That way you only have one button. Sounds like an idea.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[wealthychef]

It's just another linux machine with that horrible X thing on it. :P

Troll-bait aside, as a Mac user running OS X at work and at home, I use X11 all the time. The only problem with OS X's windowing system, Aqua, is that it does not support remote windows. With "that horrible X thing," I can and routinely do open graphical windows spawned by applications on other machines running totally different operating systems. It is the only technology out there that does that that I have ever heard of. Even between macs, try opening iTunes on your home machine from your work machine. X11 is a useful application, not horrible at all.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[0racle]

Macintosh is the hardware. For a good while the OS didn't have a name even, it was just the OS for the Macintosh, and then simply refered to as the Mac's OS and finally formally the MacOS.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[starrsoft]

Integrated Bit Torrent? Never heard of such a thing. Usually you just download it.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. Since I've tried Mac OS X, I've found it has the same warm down home feeling of pre-Solaris Sun OS 4. I've had my fill of Linux, but I guess there's just no accounting for taste.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's been done many times in the past, actually.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're wrong, but thanks for playing.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[JabberWokky]

Okay, for the pedantics in the audience, "Wine does not run apps on a PPC system that were compiled for Windows (which runs in Intel)". Which means that Wine does not work for the poster's stated purpose.

Also for the pedantics: some of the other applications that I mentioned that *do* run Windows binaries on PPC use Wine. But Wine itself can't run a Windows binary, compiled for Windows, on a PPC system.

You can, however, compile Windows apps for PPC against the winelibs - assuming you have the source code for the Windows app.

Which is to say, unless you are king of theoretical phrasing and stretching the definition, it doesn't work.

--
Evan

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[grahamlee]

for the pedantics

Pedants. I couldn't resist, sorry. :-)

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[grahamlee]

You clearly also left your mission-critical bespoke software - written back in the days when NT4/PPC was available - at home, or you're one of the lucky people who hasn't yet lost their source tape (and tests regularly that t still works). There are people out there who use NT4/PPC, and wish they weren't. Frankly, if I was using it, I'd wish I wasn't too.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[falcon5768]

ummmmm yes it does, maybe not say the exact version of wine that works for x86, but there is a power PC compatable version of wine out there.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

wow! i never noticed that if you move the goalposts, you get to pretend you werent wrong in the first place. you are teh troll master.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[swimmar132]

Can you get 5+ hours on the Pentium M laptops?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was called the "Macintosh System Software" all the way up to version 7. MacOS 8 was the first time it officially went by that name.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

incorrect

http://darwine.opendarwin.org/

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

given that windows nt runs on mips, ppc, and alpha i don't see why wine wouldn't work on ppc.

note that wince and winnt embedded runs on a bunch of other platforms, so wine should work on those too....

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[renoX]

Link?
The only part were I read him criticize PowerPC is MMU's handling which I don't really consider that it is part of the assembly language..

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[shotfeel]

I forget which web site it was waaay back when that compared PC hardware to flavors of ice cream -many variations of vanilla. If you want something really differenct (like strawberry different) you needed to get a Mac.

IOW there's no real hardware variety in the "PC" world. The closest you get is AMD/Intel. That's not saying there's any more variety in the Mac world, just that the big difference is Mac vs. PC, not Dell vs. Gateway.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I usually get 6+ hour of real work done on a single charge with a Thinkpad T41.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[uhlume]

Show me where else I can buy a 15" laptop for $2000 that isn't made of plastic.

[...]

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but -- that Titanium iBook? Not really titanium.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[xen0side]

yes I'm sure you get lots of "real" work done on your Thinkpad, while us iBook and powerbook users spend hours playing games and not doing any "real" work at all...

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wise remark. Like it or not - apple hw, without max os x isn't a mac.

So, I guess all those computers Apple sold from 1984 to 2000 were something else? Maybe I was right in calling them Mac-in-trash, especially in reference to the mid-90's models that made Windows 95 look like a rock solid, stable OS.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jbridge21]

bullshit

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

On my IBM ThinkPad T40, I've gotten around 6 hours on a single battery, playing DVDs. I've had only 1 Apple Powerbook, a G3 iBook with 14" screen. It could play DVDs around the same duration. As far as using the computer for development, compiling, coding, whatever else, just general use stuff, the iBook was far superior in battery life. The only thing that made the T40 superior is that I have 3 batteries for it, all paid for by my employer of course.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a used IBM Thinkpad T2X series.Linux
runs like a charm ( plug & play ). You'll find a
lot of those offered as off-lease models.

You'd pay $300 - $500 and the quality is simply
execellent.

Dan.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jurv!s]

right on. WTF was Apple thinking writing a WM in the late 90s without consideration for remote display. ssh -X and Windows RDC are both better than the VNC server/client that Apple has made us rely upon.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[krunk4ever]

that's right, we forgot that mac users only want one mouse button. can't call it a pc if the mouse doesn't have 2 or more.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Alien Being]

"apple hw, without max os x isn't a mac."

So all the macs they sold with MacOS 1-9 have turned into pumpkins?

Allow me to reverse troll. The 1984 machines were real macs, crash prone and overpriced. OS X is just another unix machine that favors eye candy over functionality.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[swv3752]

Expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-11 hours out of a Pentium M notebook. It depends on a number of factors But some will get better than 5 hours. I have used a Sony t150 for 7hrs straight and still had some battery juice left.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[i wanted another nam]

That's a good thing, since they stopped calling it titanium when they started calling it aluminum.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[godlikenerddotcom]

Titanium iBook? What are you talking about?

iBooks don't cost $2000.

Powerbooks used to be made with Titanium, but that was yesteryear and now they all are made using Aluminum. Neither is hardly plastic.

What were you trying to pick apart again?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[swimmar132]

Wow, that's pretty good.

And eleven hours is amazing. How do you get that?

That laptop you mentioned is double the cost of an iBook though.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Peter Danenberg]

Nope, the question should be how well does it work?

Try again; you'll notice that "good" is listed in the OED as a legitimate adverb, derived from a similar usage of the Teutonic gut:

good, a., adv., and n.

B. adv. a. qualifying a vb. In a good manner; well; properly. {dag}b. qualifying an adj. or adv., with intensive force: In a high degree, 'right'. Obs. (Cf. A. 19b.)

c1380 WYCLIF Sel. Wks. III. 130 And gode marke how Crist..bad his gostly knyghtes go into al {th}o world.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[mrsev]

"...... Big bucks? Show me where else I can buy a 15" laptop for $2000 that isn't made of plastic..." ....er mine. Gericom X5Force ... 2 years old now.. solid magnesium case, spashproof keyboard, crap speakers, P4mobile 2.2GHz, Geforce 4, 640Mb Ram and shock resitant harddrive mounting, has been severly punished for 2 years without complaint .... still beats most of what Apple offers today. Price for 1600EUR .

I hate the fact that people think Apple has amazing build quality. I work in a "mixed" enviroment of religious toleration re: OS and hardware and I find the macs to have as many hardware problems as the PCs. The only difference is the PC are easier (and cheaper) to fix. I am sure others differ please dont start a thread about Apple vs PC reliabilty..

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

you'll notice that "good" is listed in the OED as a legitimate adverb

Well, it was a good run, Western Civilization. There were some terrific moments there over the last 700 years, but it's over. The barbarians have taken over. Rather than mourn the end, let's take this as an opportunity to fondly reflect upon what we once had.

I hope the next great civilization does as well. I also hope it comes soon.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[boots@work]

Mac OS was designed for the 68000 platform first and then ported to PowerPC later. So what? In both cases the ports happened over 7(?) years ago, and there are few x86 or m68k peculiarities left.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[shellbeach]

It's just another linux machine with that horrible X thing on it.

That's funny - if he wasn't running linux I would have said it's just another machine with that horrible OS X thing on it ... ;-P

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Quobobo]

I'd be surprised if you got that much battery life on an Apple laptop. I've never had better than 3 hours on my Powerbook 15 inch, whether or not I turn off Airport/etc., and dim the backlight.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[itistoday]

Mmmm... You can do that on a Mac as well.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that a Mac without OS X isn't a Mac just isn't true. There's more to a Mac than software.

True. You also have to contend with the fact that an Apple laptop only has one button on the trackpad, making it very inconvenient to use with an OS that expects you to have three buttons. And while you can easily plug a real mouse in to a desktop Mac, it's a bit harder to swap out the trackpad...

(Yes, I know there's software that will emulate extra buttons on the pad itself. I still don't like it.)

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Mateito]

With the quality of hardware, the size/weight factor it's hard to find a notebook of comparable price, one that isn't a big piece of junk.

If you can tell me a way to add a serial port that works with Sun, Brocade and anything else that has a serial console, I'll buy a Mac.

(I've only tried a couple of USB to serial converters, and they only worked with Cisco kit, nothing else, no matter how I made the cables).

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Gid1]

Yeah.. I would imagine that with the (relatively) high level of abstraction in OS X (Cocoa message passing, Quartz, etc.) would be pretty straightforward to networkize.

As a massive stab in the dark, would that be a big enough deal to constitute "Mac OS XI"? Considering the changes from 10.0 to 10.4 so far, the change to 11 will have to be a whopping great paradigm-shift, or a marketing-driven cop-out.

Would they go as far as a Cocoa-based distributed application architecture to build effectively clustered desktop machines? I could imagine OS XI applications hosted by the "network", ie. a gestalt operating environment formed from the collected resources of all participating desktops and servers. That could presumably be constructed through the message passing architecture of Cocoa.

Whoa. Paradigm and Gestalt in the same post. This post must be Buzzword-compliant by now. Time for sleep.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[CritterNYC]

Wow, that's pretty good.

And eleven hours is amazing. How do you get that?

That laptop you mentioned is double the cost of an iBook though.

That Sony VGN-T150 is quite a different animal than anything Apple offers. It uses an Ultra Low Voltage Penitum M running at 1.1GHz. That's how it gets 6 to 11 hours of battery life with the extended-life battery.

The closest you could get with an Apple would be the 12-inch Powerbook with a Super Drive at $1700. The Sony runs between $1900 and $2000. But it's only 3.1 lbs compared to the Powerbook's 4.6 lbs and the battery life it gets is quite amazing. (even compared to the Powerbook's "up to 5 hours")

Of course, we're really comparing apples to oranges here (no pun intended) as these are very different machines for different needs.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[JabberWokky]

No. There are side projects and spinoffs, but the project named "Wine" does not run binaries compiled for Windows. You can compile Wine for PPC, and it still cannot run binaries compiled for Windows - they are targeted for x86, and Wine does not translate opcodes.

--
Evan

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[JabberWokky]

The profanity is simply unnecessary. I am making an informed statement, but could certainly be wrong. An aggravated emotional response is not required.

That said, a screen shot demonstrates very little in terms of specifics. What software were you using? Wine? A different piece of software based on Wine? Or a different emulator altogether? If it was Wine, was it a copy of putty.exe compiled for x86 Windows?

--
Evan

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[swv3752]

Basically it takes a notebook that can throttle back the CPU to a point where it doesn't need the fan to run, just enough RAM so no swap is needed but not to much to suckup the Watts, and dim the brightness of the LCD, as well as have the power management turn off the hdd after a few minutes.

I haven't used a notebook that got 11 hrs unless it was using a doublesized battery, but a friend that had a Toshiba libretto would get 10+ hrs. Another friend had a Sony Picturebook with the double battery that would get 15 hrs.

Of course the T notebook is more like a powerbook because it has a DVDRW drive. An you pay a premium for a little notebook, the thing is only 3 lbs.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jbridge21]

vanilla wine compiled for x86
putty.exe from its own website
gentoo ppc on the laptop
the latest qemu compiled from source

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jbridge21]

The profanity is simply unnecessary. I am making an informed statement, but could certainly be wrong. An aggravated emotional response is not required.

My apologies for the misunderstanding; my use of profanity here does not indicate aggravation.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Crazy Eight]

"Troll"?!

Edit: Well, that's how I began this post before the parent got remodded with a bit of, uh... moderation.

IIRC, the ULV Pentium-M consumes 7 Watts and has a higher IPC than the G4. At 1.1 GHz it will outperform the G4 in computation and power consumption. The benchmarks I've seen rank flagship Dothans alongside A64 4000+ with an Achilles Heel only on applications that bottleneck on memory bandwith before anything else. They do this with a TDP of 25 Watts. The PM has already sounded a death knell for Transmeta (if it isn't dead already) and will kill off the P4 once Intel decides it can retire that beast quietly.

Everything I've been able to gather from official specs and anecdotal reports makes the grandparent's claim about battery life shaky at best.

Apple laptops are excellent. I'm posting this from one right now. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking they're hand crafted by geniuses too sublime for pedestrian consumers unworthy of membership in Apple's Magic Circle. They're built by the same ODM that makes lappies for IBM.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I call it an emulator just because it annoys people like you.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[zonker]

no, macintosh is the entire package. i don't think you would find a single one of the original design team, for instance, that would say different. in fact that is sort of the point of why they started the whole macintosh project in the first place, because it was an entire package instead of a pile of components (like many computers of the time) or an incomplete package like the apple ii. it gives the user a complete experience, which the hardware alone doesn't. call it marketing hogwash or whatever, but the entire idea behind the macintosh is the experience.

the os has had a rather generic name for much of it's life (i would say os x is pretty generic too, but then again so is windows if you think about it)...

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[hunterx11]

A G5 won't even boot MacOS (though the limitation is artificial rather than technical)--it will only run Mac OS X.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jfmiller]

Yes,

I get 5.5-6 hours on my IBM T41 if I'm carful and not using the wirerless Network.

Note: I have the extra battery in the Drive bay.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[boots@work]

Again, so what? A G5 probably won't boot a five year old Linux distribution either. My new i386 laptop probably wouldn't boot a three-year-old copy of either windows or linux, because of its crazy hardware.

My point is that the mere fact that a system started out on platform X says nothing about how well or poorly it will now support platform Y.

Windows NT originally started out on an intel risc machine (i860). Sun started on m68k and is now on ultrasparc. HP-UX started on PA-RISC and is now primarily on ia64. PalmOS started on motorola m68881(?) and is now on ARM. Staying on the same set of processors over ten years is the exception.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[JabberWokky]

The emulation in that setup is qemu. For all intents and purposes, you are running Wine on an Intel processor. A virtual one, to be sure, but you are not running Wine on a PPC.

Nifty trick, though (and a very good example of *nix style "small apps that do their job well and can be chained together"). How well does it perform with more complicated and/or demanding applications?

--
Evan

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jurv!s]

pardon, but you don't understand what we're talking about. We know and *use* X11 on OS X all the time. What we mean is that we can't 'ssh -XC user@remoteOSXhost /Applications/Aqua.app' and expect the Aqua window to pop up on the localhost. You must resort to VNC to control an Aqua app on a remote machine and VNC is a total kludge. I would like to point out (lest you misunderstand further) that X11 apps installed on OS X (can you say fink install Xapp?) with X11Forwarding set to yes in /etc/sshd_config works just as expected.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jbridge21]

For all intents and purposes, you are running Wine on an Intel processor.

Well, duh. But IMO it's still a counterexample to "There are solutions for running Windows on PPC, both closed and open source, but Wine is not one of them."

How well does it perform with more complicated and/or demanding applications?

Unfortunately, right now the qemu ppc host support is not as advanced as x86 host, and/or wine likes to do lots of crazy stuff, so most win32 programs do not run at all. sol.exe for example crashes out without displaying anything.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Jesus_666]

Yes, I noticed that mistake immediately after hitting "Submit" (yes, I did preview my posting). "Sigh" indeed.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Jesus_666]

Upgrade! Knock over a lick-her store or something, if you need the cash.

I've heard that there is something called a "job". I might try that first, but thanks for the tip.

...of course, a job in a lick-her store would be ideal.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[smartdreamer]

X for X Windows I suppose.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[smartdreamer]

In fact, Apple is an hardware company. It sales software to sale hardware. Their base software is often free or at least was so.

That is a reason they never made Mac OS run on x86.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Gilmoure]

Candy's dandy, jobs are for mobs but lickquor's quicker!

I support all the Macs at a small college and RAM fixes lots of stuff with OSX. I'm not sure how well it's work with VirtualPC as we've only installed it on dual processor G5's. Runs pretty well, there, with 1 GB RAM.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

The opposite of what he said.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[doku_hebi_ryu]

It's not free, but you realize that Apple has this: http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

I mean. I can't actually figure out what the hell you are trying to say with "routinely do open graphical windows spawned by applications on other machines running totally different operating systems." I mean, Remote Desktop is quite a bit more than that, but if just spawing graphical windows from completely different operating systems is your bag baby, I say go with it.

Doku

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[JabberWokky]

I still maintain that you're not running Wine on the PPC, but rather an emulated layer in between. I will note freely that you can claim it is semantics, but by that logic, Windows itself runs on PPC (try telling Microsoft that).

By that logic, Apple ProDOS and Magic Window run on x86. Which isn't quite true... unless you emulate a 6502 on top of the x86.

Way back in this thread, I said that there are solutions involving Wine, but Wine by itself can't run Windows apps on a PPC. I still maintain that to be true.

(I could also pick at your calling something a "solution" and then saying "most win32 programs do not run at all". But putty is a pretty good example that at least one substantial app is able to run).

--
Evan

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

and linux without GNU just isn't possible :P

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[theTerribleRobbo]

Yes.

About six hours. IBM Thinkpad R40. No extra battery (not that the model can handle it or anything).

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Interesting", but the T40 is probably 3-4 times faster than the G3 iBook, and has a much superior screen as well.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get 6 hours from a Dell Inspiron 1150, which sports a mobile Pentium-4, among other CPU options.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Slack3r78]

Quite simply, yes. On the other hand, I have 3 friends with Aluminum Powerbooks: one is a 1GHz, the other two are 1.5GHz. They constantly complain about the battery lifes being only about 2.5 hours.

I'm typing this on a 667 TiBook that belongs to one of them, and it gets about 4 hours on battery. But that's with an extended life 3rd party battery that *just* came out for a 3 year old machine.

On the other hand, I've yet to see a Centrino rated less than 4 hours, and they've all actually gotten it in real life. The iBooks tend to get a little better battery life, but I'd have a hard time considering an iBook a fair comparison to a full blown Centrino.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you what apple users aren't doing - and thats write software. Tandy still offers a larger robust world of software compared to apple. iTunes ? LOL - you use that? safari - IE's little brother iChat - look mom, we made chatting more unorganized apple computers and apple software offer very little in the means of configurability and functionality. i see everyone talking about mac having nicer processors and equipment. none of that matters when you can't even supply software to strain it. that is unless your using digital video and digital audio, and even then my RAID 0 arrays w/ 10,0000 RPM S-ATA drives will throw my PC way ahead of anything apple can ever dish out. its like buying a hummer - once you have it, everyone around you wonders what the hell your doing with it :P image is nothing - computing is everything, trust your x86

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[TrancePhreak]

Yes, you can. Just don't play DOOM 3 too much and all will be fine.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[batura]

There really is more to a Mac in terms of hardware-- Such as really high prices on 12" laptops with only a 1024x768 screen. I only gripe about it becasue I am writing from mine and the just isn't enough on the screen.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Synbiosis]

Can you get 5+ hours on the Pentium M laptops?

yes, yes, yes, and

There are plenty of others. Just do some research before you say something stupid.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Luke-Jr]

PC means Personal Computer. This deals with usage, not software or hardware.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is if you're a systems programmer. And who else uses assembly anymore?

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[chochos]

Which is kind of odd, because OSX is derived from NextStep, and on NextStep you could run an app on one machine and have it display on different machine. It was just display poscript piped through the network to be displayed on the other host... I remember looking for that option as soon as I got my hands on OSX and I think it's gone (or maybe it's still there, but it's undocumented? I honestly can't remember what option you had to type on the command line to display an app on a different host).

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[rthille]

Well, NeXTStep had -NXHost . Basically, you login to the remote host, then run the GUI app at the command line with the -NXHost option. The app runs on the remote host, and connects to the local window server for display.
Not sure why Apple removed that capability when the changed from DPS to Quartz. Unless just to sell 'Remote Desktop'

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[schestowitz]

Technically speaking, yes. I was in fact surprised several years ago when I discovered that PC = Windows in verbal terms.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[AnZhiLan]

Maybe this does some of what you want?

Apple Remote Desktop

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Luke-Jr]

Not much moreso than "computer" = Windows to some people.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[godless dave]

I think you misunderstood. A Mac without the Mac OS isn't a Mac - it's a PowerPC. The post did NOT say a Mac without Mac OS was equivalent to an intel box. Of course there are differences in hardware. But hardware != OS.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Ilgaz]

You forgot to tell: Its also another linux machine WITHOUT SOUND.

Amazing but true, from what I see, no Linux supports the G5 internal sound.

We are speaking about machines having some sort of real sound since they started.

Its a perfect way to make OS X users stay away, thanks for saving me from partitioning my drive ;)

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[humina]

You also can't use the airport extreme cause the hardware is closed. Your options for wireless are:

1. use a USB or PCMCIA card (yuk)
2. don't use wireless. use a cable.

You also can't watch flash content cause macromedia doesn't release a linux ppc software. I've tried linux PPC on a laptop before and these two things are preventing me from trying again.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[capmilk]

Not sure why Apple removed [the NXHost] capability

That thing was a severe security risk.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to imply you said otherwise, as your analysis is very good and objective, BUT:

A major difference people may not think of in comparing these machines is the processor speed. At face value you would see that the 12" Powerbook is 1.5ghz is only slightly faster, compared to the Pentium M running at 1.1ghz. I don't have an exact benchmark handy, but the 1.5ghz G4 is probably comparable to a 2.5ghz or faster Pentium.

Not to mention that its always difficult comparing battery life between laptops. Could be that the 6-11 hour claim from Sony is when the cdrom and hard drive are idle, the display is turned off, and wireless internet is turned off, or something crazy like that.

Of course its also possible that Apple's 5-hour claim is possible but impractical, and Sony's 6 hour claim is with everything possible turned on.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought everybody's job was now in India...

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[CritterNYC]

A major difference people may not think of in comparing these machines is the processor speed. At face value you would see that the 12" Powerbook is 1.5ghz is only slightly faster, compared to the Pentium M running at 1.1ghz. I don't have an exact benchmark handy, but the 1.5ghz G4 is probably comparable to a 2.5ghz or faster Pentium.

Quite true. But this applies to Pentium 4 desktop processors. Like a G4, the Pentium M gets more 'work' done per clock cycle than a Pentium 4 or an AMD desktop chip. I don't have figures for the 1.1GHz chip, but a Pentium M 725 (1.6GHz) is roughly equivalent to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ or a P4 3.46GHz with business applications. (AnandTech) So, it looks like a Pentium M performs closer to a G4 per clock cycle than a P4. Like a G4, a PM eats up SETI, too.

Not to mention that its always difficult comparing battery life between laptops. Could be that the 6-11 hour claim from Sony is when the cdrom and hard drive are idle, the display is turned off, and wireless internet is turned off, or something crazy like that.

Of course its also possible that Apple's 5-hour claim is possible but impractical, and Sony's 6 hour claim is with everything possible turned on.

Oh, quite true. Apples up to 5 hours is possible with a new Powerbook and doing lightweight stuff (no wireless, more time reading stuff onscreen than doing anything with the processore, dimmed)... same as with the Sony. The up to 11 is possible under the same circumstances... but this is mainly due to the crazy-efficient Penitum M Ultra Low Voltage processor. If IBM came out with a similar CPU and Apple built an ultraportable out of it, I'll bet they'd achieve similar numbers.

Re:Just hardware, no apple OS.

[jurv!s]

what kind of risk? are the risks similar to the risks of X11 improperly locked down? would ssh tunnels have made it more secure?

Happy with my tibook

[DavidNWelton]

I've been happily running Debian on my Tibook since 1991. About time for a new one...

Re:Happy with my tibook

[DavidNWelton]

Uhrm... make that 2001. Not trolling though, just a bit confused as to the decade after not much sleep:-)

Re:Happy with my tibook

[Gilmoure]

I was able to run NetBSD on my 1993 Duo 270c but I don't recall seeing anyone running Linux on a Ti Book back in '91.

You lose....

[Daytona955i]

You must not be very good at the game of bullshit...

From the Darwine FAQ:
Is the Darwin/Mac OS X release of Wine currently able to run Windows executable (.exe)?

No. We are currently working on integrating an x86 emulator in wine in order to run Win32 exe on a PowerPC Box. But on Darwin-x86 a Win32 .exe should run within wine.

Also let's clear up a few things:
Darwin != OS X
Wine != Darwine

Darwin is the open source part of OS X and has been ported to the x86 platform. Darwine is a port of wine to darwin. Darwine will run windows binaries on a x86 system but not a PPC system. Got that?

last to get ports

[SethJohnson]

It's cool that you brought up the port issue. I'll expound on my frustration with linux on PPC...

I ran a webserver on PPC linux (SuSE) for a few years. The SuSE folks did a good job porting all the standard linux apps and packages over from x86. But as I sought to customize my server with special CGI packages that did stuff like photo galleries and log analysis, I would run into roadblocks because necessary libs weren't available in PPC rpms. Sure, I could try to compile them myself, but in most attempts at this, I'd run into all kinds of compile errors for which I have no knowledge of how to troubleshoot.

Eventually I scrapped my PPC server and switched to an old dual Celeron x86 box running Mandrake. It was very nice to have everything readily available for my distro.

At the point that this server dies, I intend to replace it with my antiquated B/W G3 450mhz box. I see more development focusing on Mac OS X PPC than linux PPC as I think there is a significantly larger userbase on Mac OS X than linux PPC. So, unlike mr Torvaldis, I'll probably run my system (server) off Mac OS X at that point. My desktop will remain Mac OS X.

Re:last to get ports

[iamacat]

I hate to say it, but try Gentoo. The initial setup is crazy, but this is the end of dependency problems. You get up-to-date versions of every library, not something distro maintainers neglected for a while. Then in your system configuration file you can disable support for unwanted components, like java or kde, which reduces number of dependencies or potential problems to begin with. Finally, configure can adopt a package to a far wider range of systems, versions and presence/absence of specific software than a binary package can handle.

If you don't specifically need Linux kernel, fink might be an easier option. You get access to the same packages as gentoo without, but setup on top of OSX is trivial. You can still run your server without UI if you want. Edit /etc/ttys and replace loginwindow with getty.

You're speaking of Apple hardware.

[TheLittleJetson]

Saying that a Mac without OS X isn't a Mac just isn't true. There's more to a Mac than software.

Linus' claim is correct. A Mac without OS X is not truly a Mac, as it doesn't offer the full Mac experience. However, that doesn't mean that Apple's hardware is run-of-the-mill. It's quite superb, as you've pointed out, and there are other non-mac examples of this (iPods, Airport Base Stations [I think the express is a really cool product], we've even got a few LaserWriters still in use at my work).

I think this is one of the legitimate reasons why you SHOULD run Linux on a Mac. He's fricken Linus, man! It's hard to do what he does (work on Linux) without using Linux. He's made the choice for real, practical reasons. It frustrates me that several in the slashdot crowd want to run Linux on Apple hardware because they think there's some lame/n00b stigma attached to OS X. I've said it plenty of times before, and I'll say it again: OS X run's the majority of unixoid apps just fine. It's the best-fit for Apple hardware; the level of integration between hardware/software is going to be very difficult to reproduce with Linux, especially on a notebook. Don't make the switch unless you have stuff that needs to be done under Linux that simply CAN NOT be done under OS X...

Re:You're speaking of Apple hardware.

[SquadBoy]

OS X is not DFSG free. This is a deal breaker for me and many others and a real reason not to use it. You might be willing to give up your freedom for a shiny OS but many of us are not.

That being said Debian runs better on my G3 tower than it would on any X86 machine I could have gotten for the same price.

Re:You're speaking of Apple hardware.

[BasilBrush]

Well I hope you are consistent. You better not have bought that G3 tower, and I hope you grow/hunt/beg for all your food. Would't want you compromising your freedom by actually buying something.

Re:You're speaking of Apple hardware.

[SquadBoy]

DFSG free has nothing at all to do with cost. One of the points of free software is that you can resell it.

http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

Re:You're speaking of Apple hardware.

[BasilBrush]

You can resell OS X.

Section 3 of the license allows you to transfer the license to another person, provided that you transfer the installation media along with the license, and don't keep any copies.

So, you can resell it like a book. I hope you haven't bought any books!

Shameless plug

[DaHat]

So how much do we think /. accepted for this so prominently placed ad?

Re:Shameless plug

[isometrick]

A lot less than the $0 I paid them to try to get this posted.

I know, but the thread had the word "shameless" in it, mod me down if you must.

Re:Shameless plug

[isometrick]

"Less" is "more". Ahem.

Re:Shameless plug

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I would but Ive got no mod points.

Huh?

[SmokeHalo]

iPods with Front Wheel Drive?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's complementary to the BMWs that have iPods installed, as many of those are rear-wheel drive hockey pucks. :)

Re:Huh?

[eobanb]

Oh yeah? Mine's got a body kit and type R sticker.

Re:Huh?

[suwain_2]

Yeah, but they run Linux.

Re:Huh?

[NanoGator]

"Yeah, but they run Linux."

So... I'm guessing we can't get that with an automatic transmission, then.

Campatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is, will this work with a PC running CherryOS?

Great!

[northcat]

Now we can play 384 different versions of tetris on our iPods!

Re:Great!

[FLAGGR]

Nope, you didn't even read the article summary did you? It's to boot a computer, using the ipod as an hdd, not running linux on the ipod.

Re:Great!

[northcat]

It's called "joke". Look it up in the dictionary.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That was even better than your first one!

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but it's bad joke. So look up "stfu" in your precious "dictionary."

Re:Great!

[StalinsNotDead]

You get this.

You have to go to the acronym finder.

Re:Great!

[NanoGator]

"It's called "joke". Look it up in the dictionary."

You're using that term awfully loosely there.

Ah, but...

[PornMaster]

Is this how Linus boots his Mac?

Re:Ah, but...

[winkydink]

No, that would be a separate article. Anything Linus does is a separate article.

Re:Ah, but...

[Chup]

A separate article would be "a," depending on your definition of "a."

Honest journalism

[GrouchoMarx]

At least for a change they're not trying to pretend this is a real article instead of a commercial. They're being very obvious that it's an unpaid advertisement. That's an improvement for Slashdot of late.

Sad.

Re:Honest journalism

[slavemowgli]

True, and I'm not suprised to see that it's timothy who posted this. Damn, wasn't this idiot removed as an editor a while ago?

Re:Honest journalism

[Atzanteol]

Company 'foo' offers new product isn't news? Okay, no more "Apple farts, smells like roses" articles, "Intel releases newest chip" articles, or any new products what-so-ever...

Do you really want to be stuck with stories only about "I got my X to run Linux!" articles and "How do I search the internet" ask slashdot posts?

Re:Honest journalism

[NanoGator]

"At least for a change they're not trying to pretend this is a real article instead of a commercial."

Commercials are not exempt from being 'news for nerds'.

Re:Honest journalism

[oirtemed]

Press Release != article If there is an honest, journalistic article written about a product/service then sure. But a Press Release is a joke.

Re:Honest journalism

[Atzanteol]

Press Release == News though. News for Nerds. Not Journalism for Nerds.

Re:Honest journalism

[Stuart Gibson]

Do you really want to be stuck with stories only about "I got my X to run Linux!"

You got X to run on Linux? I still can't get past the command line. Can you link me to an article that describes step by step how to achieve this holy grail?

(Please turn on tongue in cheek detectors before replying)

Stuart

ilinux rok!

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess now I can stick it to the man by using it as a small Linux device. h0h0h0, take that apple!

mirrordot link

[Anonymous Coward]

it's already slow

Terra Soft

Woah!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Terra Soft Solutions(R), Inc., the leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions"

Woah! Leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions. That's impressive! I wonder if there is a second place?

Re:Woah!

[flu1d]

Woah! Leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions. That's impressive! I wonder if there is a second place?

software tester

Re:Woah!

[remahl]

Uhm, IBM?

Re:Woah!

[Jozer99]

What about IBM? After all, they are one of the worlds largest companies. Also, they are the leading developer of PowerPC, seeing as they are the designers and one of the only manufacturers of such chips. Don't they use that Linux thingie there too?

Honest Question

[American AC in Paris]

I honestly wish Terra Soft the best of luck with this venture, but I can't help but wonder how large market is going to be.

Setting aside the "because I can" and "because it's Linux" arguments, what is the benefit of running YDL instead of OS X on one's Mac?

Re:Honest Question

[nine-times]

Setting aside the "because I can" and "because it's Linux" arguments, what is the benefit of running YDL instead of OS X on one's Mac?

Oh, I don't know, but not every Linux app is ported to Darwin, and maybe someone only wants to run Linux apps. I know if I had Mac hardware and only wanted to run OpenOffice and Evolution and the GIMP, I'd get rid of OSX and install Linux, just 'cause it's easier to get those working, and the interfaces would be more at home in Gnome than OSX (I like consistency).

Anyway, that doesn't necessarily tell you why you'd want to boot into Linux from an external hard drive, but I bet someone wants it. Actually, now that I think about it, I've tried installing Linux on my iPod to try it out (I thought it'd be easier than making a dual-boot system) so I don't think it's too weird.

Re:Honest Question

[argent]

IDGI either, what's the point of having a Mac-only Linux on ones iPod instead of a boot-anywhere LiveCD so you can boot an otherwise worthless (and much more widely available) Windows box and just use your iPod/Flashdrive as storage?

Re:Honest Question

[HiThere]

Gimp works fine under OS X. True, it's an X Window application, but it still works fine...and it tries to hide it's root from naive users.

OTOH, I have a Mac portable that I intend to get properly configured one of these days. (I need to clear a space near an internet connection that has enough headroom to open the case, and get MOL properly set up. Currently it's either Linux OR Mac, I can't boot into Linux and then open a Mac window for a game.)

And THAT's the reason that I have OSX installed. Games and other special features (like airport). But give me the KDE desktop anytime. I find it far superior to the Mac. (Well, it *IS* what I use on my main computer, so perhaps it's just what I'm used to.)

Re:Honest Question

[jomas1]

IDGI either, what's the point of having a Mac-only Linux on ones iPod instead of a boot-anywhere LiveCD so you can boot an otherwise worthless (and much more widely available) Windows box and just use your iPod/Flashdrive as storage?

Terra Soft focuses on the linux on PPC arch. Maybe you think that is pointless but do we really need another live cd that is x86 only? Do you think it's a good idea that no one focuses on linux on other architectures?

Re:Honest Question

[Atzanteol]

Seriously. How *dare* they question the Gospel of Jobs?

Re:Honest Question

[nine-times]

Yes, I believe that all the apps I mentioned (GIMP, OOo, and Evolution) have been ported to Darwin and will run under OSX's X server. However, that's not the same as saying I've gotten them to work. Granted I haven't tried in a while, but I suspect that it's still easier and faster to get them running on YDL (since they're installed by default) rather than OSX. Plus, like I said, they won't look like native OSX apps, so they'd be more at-home in a Gnome desktop.

Personally, as far as DEs go, my preference is for OSX. However, I also run Ubuntu (Gnome) on my Dell at work, and I'm quite happy with it. If there were some reason why it made sense to drop OSX and run Linux/Gnome on my Powerbook, I doubt the change would really bother me. However, if I *had* to run a Linux app, I'd probably look to fink before I wiped my OSX install.

Bla bla bla.... I don't say this because I really think you care about my preferences, but more to indicate that a lot of this *is* preference. Whether you want to run Linux or OSX on Apple hardware depends on what you like and what you need, and though I doubt everyone on earth is scrambling to buy an iPod with YDL pre-installed, I'll admit that I might try installing YDL on my iPod when the new version becomes available for free.

Re:Honest Question

[humina]

Unfortunately the lack of an airport driver is the main reason I have not gone with Linux on my Mac. I prefer a 100% open source operating system instead of apple's open source darwin/closed source aqua. That and I can't check homestarrunner.com cause there's no open source flash viewer and macromedia won't release ppc closed source compatible version.

Re:Honest Question

[javaxman]

Setting aside the "because I can" and "because it's Linux" arguments, what is the benefit of running YDL instead of OS X on one's Mac?

Setting aside those two arguments ( which are fairly compeling, but we'll set them aside since you say so ) there is only one scenario I can think of where I'd run Linux on *my* Mac, but it's entirely likely. I currently use a Mac at home. What if, next month, I get a gig programming in a Linux environment? Am I going to go out and buy a whole new machine, or am I going to install Linux on my existing hardware?

If I can install Linux on my existing hardware, I'm going to. But I'm not going to want to boot my machine that way all the time, because OS X has a good number of apps that I use ( for non-work purposes ) which don't exist ( really ) under Linux, and I'm not sure the wife and 3-year-old are ready to make the switch ot Linux.

So doing the external-hard-drive thing would be neat. And using something as tiny as an iPod to carry my entire Linux world around between home and work? Even cooler.

Instead of buying a new mobo for my outdated PC that's been sitting idle for years now, I can buy an iPod, and maybe even write it off! Super-cool.

As for the market? It's probably not huge, but does it need to be? I thought OSS was about having options, not about having the biggest install base...

Re:Honest Question

[argent]

You're missing the point.

I understand that people want to be able to boot their Macs into Linux without having to reinstall the internal drive. I might use this myself, just to play with Linux on my Mac Mini.

What I'm talking about is the idea of using this capability as a kind of "portable Linux". There are so few situations where one might find a free and unused Mac (since a Mac is almost always going to be actually in use: "People like to use the Macintosh"), but there's Windows-infested PCs everywhere... for a "portable Linux" a LiveCD and temp files on the iPod is much more practical.

Re:Honest Question

[nathanh]

If I can install Linux on my existing hardware, I'm going to. But I'm not going to want to boot my machine that way all the time, because OS X has a good number of apps that I use ( for non-work purposes ) which don't exist ( really ) under Linux, and I'm not sure the wife and 3-year-old are ready to make the switch ot Linux.

Run MOL. You get MacOS X either fullscreen or in a window but with Linux running at all times. MOL is fast and stable. Even GUI effects like Expose are speedy enough. You can even set it so your wife and child's accounts launch automatically into MOL.

Re:Honest Question

[menace3society]

YDL has a (proprietary) app that runs OS X from within Linux. This would enable you to enjoy 1) all the gooey cool Mac OS X advantages while 2) running your free Linux apps without spending a week dicking around with autoconf.

Re:Honest Question

[hahiss]

Well, a few main reasons: 1. I believe in Free Software, and I value the freedom it provides. 2. My iBook (rev 2, g3 500) runs OS X really slowly, and GNU/Linux (formerly Yellow Dog, currently Ubuntu) performs much better. Since nobody's pitching in to replace my hardware, this is my best option. (Though, in fairness, if I were buying new hardware I'd probably buy a powerbook and put Ubuntu on it.) 3. While I appreciate the aesthetic of the lickable interface of OS X, I refuse to surrender the ability to choose my window manager in X. I prefer Window Manager Improved (WMI) as an interface to my computer. OS X doesn't give me that sort of control over my environment. It is my computer, and I want it to accomodate my working style---not have to adapt my habits to the design preferences of anyone else.

Re:Honest Question

[clymere]

well, this is what products like VMWare were created for.

Plus, you could simply dual-boot the machine. Adding a second hard drive would be a lot cheaper than buying an ipod.

I'm assuming the idea is being able to take all your work between locations where you have a computer(such as home and work), and being able to boot up linux...without needing a laptop.

Of course thats exactly why i bought a laptop: I got sick of using computers at school that didn't have the tools I felt i needed to get actually get things done(and they disable booting off cd/floppy/usb, so laptop was the only choice).

Personally, I don't see this being useful for most people. Perhaps if they were somehow able to get it to boot on either mac or x86, and keep the same /home for either. You'd be limited in what extras you could install without making sure to install it on both...but as only a small percentage have a mac both at work and home(unless they work in graphics), this might be more realistic.

Me, I'm happy throwing the occaisonal file on my MP3 player if i need the storage, and I lug the laptop wherever i go.

Re:Honest Question

[pkb]

There's segments of the embedded systems market (networking comes to mind) where PowerPC processors do well. A lot of those embedded systems run Linux. And it just may be that the best development host for a PowerPC Linux target is a PowerPC Linux host.

Re:Honest Question

[anagama]

In addition to the respondant who asks "why would we need yet another x86 bootable cd" -- have you ever tried to use a system running off a bootable Linux CD? I'm the first to admit that these live CDs are great for the "wow - everything works" test, but I tried using Knoppix on cd on a PIII 600ish laptop - everything worked but it took about forever for Konqueror to load up off the cd. Same interminable wait for starting up any other program. I think it goes without saying that running the OS off a HD is going to be a heck of a lot faster, probably fast enough to be usable.

I'm awfully tempted too. I've been keeping my backups for my various computers on a firewire enclosure for an old laptop drive -- this seems like it would be worth playing with.

Re:Honest Question

[mrchaotica]

Proprietary? You mean something other than Mac-on-Linux?

Re:Honest Question

[argent]

So don't load Konq off the CD. Just put enough on the boot CD to boot the OS, and run the apps off your iPod or flash drive.

The point is that there's 30 PCs out there for every Mac, and probably 90 unused PCs for every unused Mac, and 180 PC-based internet cafes for every Mac one... so a solution that gets you up and running on a PC is ninety nine and forty four hundredths percent* more likely to get you up on Linux at some random location when you need it than a Mac one. And once you're in Linux it doesn't matter what you started with...

* Statistics 99 44/100 percent pure guesswork.

Re:Honest Question

[menace3society]

It was still proprietary the last time I checked (which was, I admit, a while ago).

Re:Honest Question

[m_c_rose]

There is definatly the aspect of moving YOUR data your OS and your preferences from site to site easily that is marketable. You can take your "computer" back and forth to work and client sites etc.

Re:Honest Question

[javaxman]

Adding a second hard drive would be a lot cheaper than buying an ipod.

Yes. But since the machine is a flat-panel iMac, you're talking about an external hard drive anyway. More space, but oddly enough, not all that much cheaper than an iPod, depending on the iPod and the hard drive...

I'm assuming the idea is being able to take all your work between locations where you have a computer(such as home and work), and being able to boot up linux...without needing a laptop.

That would be the idea. All theory right now, of course. I currently don't need Linux at work.

Of course thats exactly why i bought a laptop: I got sick of using computers at school that didn't have the tools I felt i needed to get actually get things done(and they disable booting off cd/floppy/usb, so laptop was the only choice).

Of course, buying an external hard drive is much cheaper than buying a laptop. Not that I wouldn't like to have a nice laptop, just nobody has offered to pay for one.

Personally, I don't see this being useful for most people. Perhaps if they were somehow able to get it to boot on either mac or x86, and keep the same /home for either. You'd be limited in what extras you could install without making sure to install it on both...but as only a small percentage have a mac both at work and home(unless they work in graphics), this might be more realistic.

I have a Mac at both work and home. I bought the Mac, in part, because we use them at work ( and I don't work in graphics, btw ). So I guess I'm not most people... but it's useful even if you just have a Mac, want to muck around with Linux, but don't want to give up OS X or run Linux under emulation. I'm pretty sure that's the target market, really. Firewire boot drive support is just an added feature to the existing product, not really that big of a deal, other than it makes it easier for someone to use OS X as their main OS and boot from an external drive for Linux. Not for most people, but then, that's the definition of YDL, isn't it?

Re:Honest Question

[clymere]

Of course, buying an external hard drive is much cheaper than buying a laptop. Not that I wouldn't like to have a nice laptop, just nobody has offered to pay for one.

I bought that laptop for $300 actually. Only a P3...but still plenty for what i needed. I'll admit i didn't check, but I'm guessing that the cost of ipod + YDL + these guys putting it together for you > $300

I don't own anything Mac anyways, so it obviously doesn't make sense for me. You've got some valid points. Just felt I should point out the fallacy of laptops being expensive. I used to think the same thing. They're not.

And even more amusing, I sold that laptop for $500, and bought a brand new 1.4 Celeronfor $500 :) Perhaps if I keep trading up eventually I can get a nice powerbook :D

Re:Honest Question

[javaxman]

And even more amusing, I sold that laptop for $500, and bought a brand new 1.4 Celeronfor $500 :) Perhaps if I keep trading up eventually I can get a nice powerbook :D

Hilarious!!! Did you buy the laptop used? Heck, I might even use an Intel laptop if it was that cheap. PIII is plenty horsepower in a laptop for running Linux, or even Win2k if you gotta play that cheezy game on the go. Heck, even I might do that. It'd depend on the specs of the machine, though. I hate the feel of low-memory configurations, waiting on hard drives is the worst.

I guess my point is plenty of folks want to have an iPod anyway, why not justify it as a business expense so you can write it off on your taxes if you can! I wouldn't mind having an iPod, but I agree it's expensive, and I get by with my MP3 CD player just fine... it's just cute that there's really a business use for an iPod.

Re:Honest Question

[clymere]

yup, it was used...bought it on ebay. You can easily get a p3 for $300 these days if you look for them.

But honestly, you can also regularly get CeleronM machines like mine for $500 new, which is a great deal as well.

Yipeee

[Anonymous Coward]

linux, Ipod. All is great in the Slashdot world.

Availability?

[SiliconEntity]

Aren't they supposed to make this stuff generally available, when it's based on GPL'd software? It looks like right now the only way to get access to it is to join their ydl.net program.

Re:Availability?

[pete-classic]

No.

Have you even read it?

-Peter

Re:Availability?

[Chirs]

Technically, under the GPL they only have to make the code available to their customers, not anyone else.

However, they cannot keep their customers from redistributing the code...

Chris

Re:Availability?

[SiliconEntity]

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

Since they've started distributing this, that means they have to make the source code available to any third party who requests it, right? So why can't I get it? Are they allowed to delay for a while before making it available?

Re:Availability?

[pete-classic]

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

So, they only have to give it to "members" or whomever they provide binaries to.

-Peter

Re:Availability?

[Everleet]

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

...

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

They don't have to give it to everyone, but they do have to license it to everyone.

Re:Availability?

[DenDave]

So where is the torrent for it eh? LOL!!!

Seriously though, I cannot imagine they pulled this joke off without massivly reverse enginering the firmware on the I-pod !! And that will attract Job's Evil Eye..

Re:Availability?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a song about this once.. I believe it was the Dimmu Borgir and it was written by the man with the goat...

Yehaa!!

Re:Availability?

[pete-classic]

Sometimes having a discussion on /. is like trying to nail jell-o to the wall.

This all started with the question, "Aren't they supposed to make this stuff generally available, when it's based on GPL'd software? It looks like right now the only way to get access to it is to join their ydl.net program."

Do you think your statement addresses that question? Do you think he was talking about licensing or source code? Do you think that by "available" he meant "not stop people who obtain the source code by registering from redistributing IAW the GPL?"

My perspective is that he meant source code. That he mis-understands the GPL.

The fact is that as long as they make the code available to whomever they distribute their binaries to, and don't stop those people from re-distributing, they are in the clear.

-Peter

Re:Availability?

[Minna Kirai]

This all started with the question, "Aren't they supposed to make this stuff generally available, when it's based on GPL'd software?

That was a valid question. Although the company doesn't need to provide the software to the public, they must allow their customers to do so. That means its highly likely that in just a few days, a customer will slap it up on the web or bittorrent someplace.

So, asking if any existing subscribers are redistributing the project is a reasonable query.

My kid's lemonade stand needs more traffic

[jephthah]

can i get a slashdot news bulletin, too?

Re:My kid's lemonade stand needs more traffic

[DrLZRDMN]

If it runs Linux.

Re:My kid's lemonade stand needs more traffic

[jephthah]

yeah, but it just partitioned your drive.

sorry. hope you didnt mind.

Portability to the max

[birdowner]

This is an awesome idea. I spend so much time around computers: lab computers, office machines. The only thing I need is my own storage. I should be able to carry the disk with me, and then which computer I am at is irrelevant. Also reduces sysadmin hassles. Kudos.

Re:Portability to the max

[VolciMaster]

Wasn't there a Slashdot posting just yesterday about this exact thing... but using multi-session CD's?

Re:Portability to the max

[chef_raekwon]

hate to rain on your parade, but you could have just picked up a laptop drive, plugged it into an external USB container, and had the same ability 2 years ago. maybe longer.

Slow Site - Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

I N T H E N E W S

Terra Soft Ships Bootable Linux iPods, FireWire drives

Loveland, Colorado -- 9 March 2005 -- Terra Soft Solutions(R), Inc., the leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, is pleased to announce support for bootable iPods and FireWire drives, both immediately available from Terra Soft with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed.

A bootable iPod or FireWire drive contains a full installation of Yellow Dog Linux which can be used as an external, bootable drive. All applications, data, and /home directory information is contained in this palm-sized medium, offering an unprecedented level of portability as users can boot G4 and G5 Apple computers from the iPod or FireWire drive, leaving internal drives untouched.

Bill Mueller, Terra Soft software engineer states, "While the goal of this project was to simply enable bootable FireWire, I took it one step further and incorporated Anaconda, a patched 'parted', and a clever partition resize tool. I just couldn't put the project down. I wanted to be able to install directly to my iPod from the Yellow Dog Install CDs ... now you can do just that."

Terra Soft has created a hybrid Yellow Dog Linux v4.0.1 #1 Install CD that incorporates the changes required to install to an iPod or FireWire drive from the graphical installer. This hybrid is immediately available through YDL.net Enhanced accounts at www.ydl.net.

"Since the day Apple first incorporated FireWire support we have been asked to enable Yellow Dog to install to a FireWire drive. While we would have gladly made this happen sooner, it was in fact a substantial challenge not easily completed. Now complete, no longer does one need to reformat an internal drive, reinstall OSX, and then Yellow Dog. With bootable external devices or the ability to resize an internal drive without reformat, Yellow Dog Linux just became a far more flexible, even more powerful OS," offers Kai Staats, co-founder & CEO.

Now available from the Terra Soft on-line Store are iPods and LaCie brand external FireWire drives with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed.

Staats continues, "Consider an iPod or pocket FireWire drive the most portable Linux workstation in the world. If there are Macs at your destination, you need only bring your drive and cable, reboot the borrowed computer, hold the Option key, and go. It's simple. It's fast. And it just works."

Terra Soft thanks Bill Fink for his original work that laid the foundation for bootable PowerPC Linux FireWire drives, and Guillaume Knispel for the partition resize tool which became integral in this solution.

About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading Integrated Solutions Provider with proven expertise in the PowerPC architecture and Linux OS platform. As an Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider and IBM Business Partner, Terra Soft provides turnkey and build-to-order portables, desktop workstations, application and network servers, and HPC clusters. Terra Soft's Y-HPC 64-bit OS and cluster construction suite is widely accepted as the preferred platform for Xserve clusters.

For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com

IBM and PowerPC are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Apple and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Uh, yeah, sure...

[digitalamish]

In a nutshell they turned an iPod into an external hard drive. Then the Macs will treat it as such and boot to it. Basically they turned a $200+ device* into a $29 USB key.

*unless you get a free one!

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because theres a ton of 60 gb USB keys...

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[VoidWraith]

Which Linux distro takes up 60 GB?

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Quixote]

*unless you get a free one!

You can get a free iPod ? Really ?? Where???

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hippo Linux, the worlds premiere bloatware distro. Their "enhanced" version of Emacs takes up 8 gigs by itself.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Hi_2k]

Phrase it another way: Which USB key allows you to store your whole desktop enviroment, plus ~58.5 gb of data?

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[hackstraw]

*unless you get a free one!

Thats easy. Just click on my foe list. about 90% of them are willing to give you a free iPod after they get one first and you pay money (their version of free, not mine) and register for a bunch of spam and other marketing ploys (again, their version of free not mine), and then you are the low man in the pyramid and you have to then sucker others to be the new low people.

Yes, people, if you have a free anything in your sig that is not free, I will foe you and filter you just like I do with my email. I do not like nor do I support spam.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[SeanAhern]

Some people may be missing the point. This is more than just a way to hold a bootable Linux distribution. This is all of your home, third party applications, databases, everything. Rather than merely keeping some of your documents with you (as many do with small USB drives), this contains everything, simply everything you need to do work on your computer. It is your computer, in essence. On my laptop (running Fedora Core), my home directory weighs in at about 16 gigabytes.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's the standard version of Emacs.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[TMonks]

I hope they make these for x86, too, as it would make the perfect prank to pull on your non-linux friends. Just swap out their ipods for one of these when they're not looking...

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Bilestoad]

Phrase it still another way - what kind of idiot pays that much money for a slow external 60GB hard drive?

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, craziness. I remember my first Linux install - SLS 1.05, kernel 0.99pl12. I decided to partition my large 60 MB disk into 40 MB for Linux and the other 20 or so for Win 3.11. And I had oodles of room to spare!

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Basically they turned a $200+ device* into a $29 USB key.

You don't want to boot from a USB key, that would be incredibly slow. You also don't want to swap to it as flash memory has a much lower ceiling of re-writes. Not that you'd necessarily want to boot from an iPod, as those drives are slow, just not as slow as a flash key.

Given that a $200 iPod is 4GB, I don't know of any $29 USB keys that can store 4GB.

There really isn't a standard for booting from a USB key either. First, there is the issue of whether a particular computer can do it, it varies by machine, one set up for one type of bootloader might not work with a bootloader of another brand.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Post your referrer link. I want a free iPod too!

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[nxtw]

You sound fairly bitter. Did you have trouble getting five people to sign up? How did this get modded insightful? I doubt you ignoring those with non-free signatures will make a difference.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[snuf23]

Hey! There really are free iPods! I got my iPod Mini absolutely free with no strings attached!
All I had to do was attend a free Verizon seminar on VOIP and be lucky enough to win the door prize.
Easy!

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Moofie]

Somebody who wants a small, bus-powered external 60gb drive.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Bilestoad]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc ription=22-161-609&depa=0

Or you could pay double for the Apple product, if your religion commands it.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[zonker]

this is cool and all, but users should be made aware that while the ipod can store general files and even boot and run linux the ipod wasn't designed to do it longterm and apple recommends against it.

the problem is mostly due to the enclosed design that traps heat inside the case with no airflow, which is partly why (aside from the nice look) the back of the ipod is made of metal, to dissipate the heat. this isn't a problem when you use the ipod as a music player as it only accesses the disk every now and then. the only time when it really ever heats up is when you are first putting a lot of music on it or when you do a restore.

btw, for those that haven't seen the innards of the ipod it has it's mainboard, hard drive and battery all sandwiched back to back.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[MustardMan]

Yeah, I'm defending a cheezy scheme, but misinformation is stupid so here goes...

willing to give you a free iPod after they get one first

No one who's giving you a referral link is promising you an ipod. Rather, they are giving a link to a website that will give you an ipod in exchange for doing the legwork to do some "viral marketing" for them. Also, there is no requirement for me to get my free ipod before you get yours. You get five referrals, you get the ipod. What your referrer does means nothing. Whether your refer-ees refer anyone means nothing. This is the primary thing that seperates it from a classic pyramid scheme.

and you pay money (their version of free, not mine)

I've done three of these free promotions. Two of them were free 1-month trials. I cancelled the accounts after two weeks and wasn't billed a cent. The third was a trial of Blockbuster's version of netflix, a service I was going to sign up for anyway, and thoroughly enjoy.

and register for a bunch of spam and other marketing ploys (again, their version of free not mine)

I haven't recieved a single piece of spam on the email addresses I used for the sites I signed up for. The marketing ploy part, I suppose, could be a valid statement, since the entire POINT of the scheme is to be a marketing ploy.

To summarize, yeah you might think the freeX.com schemes are sneaky and lame, but your view of them is filled with misinformation. If you want to hate something, feel free, but don't hate it based on ignorance.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[CODiNE]

Why is this rated so high? Are you unaware that all iPods are ALREADY external hard drives as well as portable music players? The 1st Gen iPod had this as do all the rest. I know the Anti-Apple people needed a post to mod higher, but this one is simply wrong. Mac users have booted their systems from iPods since day one. This is the first LINUX system built in such a way that the Mac firmware will recognize it and boot off it. No configuration needed, no BIOS to play with, no bootloader tricks. Just plug it in and restart and ur good.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[NanoGator]

"Which Linux distro takes up 60 GB?"

I'm not sure whether I should answer with RedHat or use my life-line

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Everleet]

I care.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Ilgaz]

First I thank him for that idea, foe list.

Second is, advertising something for free in sake of your AND your friends privacy on slashdot is priceless.

I wonder if one could code a analysis tool who will harvest all "free iPod" signatures and check their past comments about privacy. Results will be really funny.

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can try and justify it as much as you like. You are still a spamming cocksucker working for other spamming cocksuckers.

And spammers should be exterminated. Any questions?

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[billdar]

Except the USB key doesn't play music, work with iTunes, etc...

Re:Uh, yeah, sure...

[ChuyMatt]

... Bastard.

RAT bastard.

Re:What was the CPM, Taco?

[superpulpsicle]

No kidding, they got to make the ads less obvious. Like change the title to M$ employee and SCO employee loves iPods running linux on campus.

Yaaaaaay!!

[CODiNE]

About time! I was promised this would be in YDL 4.0 but it didn't make the cut for the shipping CD. Now I can finally REALLY give Linux a try on this iBook, not just some LiveCD. While I am stuck in OS X for some critical apps, with MOL I just might be able to use this full time. Couldn't justify wiping out a production machine that I use everyday just to find out though. Will have to wait a week or so for the new YDL to be freely downloaded, then time's time to whip out the firewire drive. :-D Good stuff.

Re:Yaaaaaay!!

[alsy]

What LiveCDs are there for PowerPC computers?

Re:Yaaaaaay!!

[CODiNE]

Best one I have been able to find is Ubuntu's Warty Pre-release. It doesn't seem to have been updated for the release so you have to dig around to find it. It's fairly new also so you get good hardware support with it.

-Don.

Caches

[Shachaf]

The website was very slow, so here's the Coral Cache.

Re:Caches

[Kimos]

I don't claim to understand Coral Cache, but that link is just as broken....

Here:
http://mirrordot.com/stories/a2d82b417908aa39d1f93 7ce5d3f4d74/index.html

Linus says

[jaymzter]

Crap! Wouldn't you know it, right after I just installed Yellow Dog too >:(

Don't host from an ipod

[acomj]

There is a lesson here.. The quick slashdotting apears to indicate raid works better than an ipod for running your server.

Re:Don't host from an ipod

[justforaday]

Actually, unless they upgraded at some point in the past coupla years, they're probably still running their site off an old beige G3...They used to mention that somewhere on the site, well into the era of G4s...

Re:Don't host from an ipod

[eobanb]

Just use an iPod RAID then.

Re:dead as a doorknob.

[pilgrim23]

"Indeed too bad", he said, pointing at the slidey, line thing on his slipstick that seems to be stuck in place... "Cursor's foiled again!" and I SOOO wanted Linux on my iPod gen 1, ...and XP on my Newton too..

Substantial challenges to FW install.

[swb]

What were the substantial challenges?

Maybe a highly portable Mac

[MBraynard]

My flatmates powerbook blew out the harddrive. In order to do it on the cheap and still make the machine useful, he is running OSX from his Ipod.

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

A hard drive is pretty cheap, and you don't run the risk of wearing out your iPod's hard drive that way.

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[XpirateX]

Powerbook? iPod? Cheap? Same sentence? I must be dreaming!

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[aixou]

Why doesn't he sell the iPod, and with the money get a new laptop harddrive and iPod shuffle.

Sounds like a win-win to me. Sure the shuffle might not be as good as the regular iPod, but if he overheats his iPod he's gonna be out a harddrive and an iPod.

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[MBraynard]

Dude, I don't even understand why he owns a Mac at all. Mind you, this is sitting right next to his new G5 thingy (whatever it is - it's like the whole computer is in the flat screen monitor and it's a pretty white color.)

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[eboot]

Using your iPod as a booting operating system kills the battery. I don't know why or how, but I'm pretty sure it does. Did mine anyway. Mind you that was an old 5 gig one (that I'd luckily replaced for a 3rd generation one).

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not sell the busted Powerbook, buy a working PC, pocket some money, and keep the iPod? Sounds like a better deal to me!

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[zygote]

I was under the impression that running the OS off an iPod is something Apple has been discouraging. Heat issues were a reason I saw floated a few years ago. Recently the Mini was ruled out as a bootable drive, would it be due to the CF card base of it?

The high disk access rate and the kind of work the iPod disk would run into as a booted drive generates too much heat in that sealed box it is in, as opposed to what playing music or audiobooks does.
I thought the latest generations of iPods were purposefully made so they couldn't boot a machine. I didn't see in the article if they mucked with the firmware to overcome this.

Re:Maybe a highly portable Mac

[Yaztromo]

I was under the impression that running the OS off an iPod is something Apple has been discouraging.

It is, but there is at least one support article that says "you shouldn't do this, but here's how you can do it" :).

My 15GB iPod has a minimal OS X install on it. I use it for maintenance a handful of times per year, and keep it set-up in the event my PowerBook ever has hard drive problems (if, for example, my PowerBook hard drive's SMART status reported a problem, I could boot off the iPod to minimize access to the main hard drive, and copy data off the main drive over to a network drive. I do keep daily backups of important documents, but like to have a backup system for accessing my data if things suddenly go bad with the hard drive).

I wouldn't use this setup for day-to-day access however.

Yaz.

Re:What was the CPM, Taco?

[Anonymous Coward]

so slashdot should no longer mention any new products ever?

there will be very little 'news' left because most things that happen arew because of companies.

Two steps away

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not build 3 partitions on the iPod itself, one for user data, one for a PPC boot, one for an x86 boot? Plug into any FW enabled platform and run. Throw in up to 40 GB of your own crap. I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Boot Debian on any machine you like! A crossplatform Knoppix running from an iPod. You know that's the wave of the damn future right there. For mobile Slashdot types anyway.

If you were really sharp perhaps it would even be possible to emulate the PortalPlayer functionality so you could listen to tunes while it was disconnected. Now if only there were a way to stick a GBA cartridge in it...

Sure it's an advertisement...

[Anonymouse Cownerd]

But this has not been offered any company before (ttbomk - to the best of my knowledge), so it is important to point this out to the /. community. Besides, it may interest quite a few people. I know i once wondered if any company would sell an iPod like this.

Re:Sure it's an advertisement...

[Anonymous Coward]

my company has been shipping bootable ipods for a very long time now. Our iPods were used to automatically boot and provision clusters of Apple G5 workstations or Xserves. We won an Apple Design Award for this 2 years ago.

So you don't think this is an advert I'll leave my company name out of it... :)

Power Computing for the Homeless.

[jephthah]

so, take this to a public library terminal, stick it in, reboot their machine, and VIOLA!

you've just partitioned their hard drive, and now have your own private workstation.

im sure they wont mind.

power to the people.

Re:Power Computing for the Homeless.

[Anonymous Coward]

VIOLA!

I prefer violin.

nice, but ..

[torpor]

.. i can do it myself, therefore why do i need to see a commercial about it?

Re:nice, but ..

[catdevnull]

If you can actually get YDL to install properly, go for it! :)

iPod Linux

[Joey Patterson]

Note that this is about booting a Macintosh into Linux, not running Linux on the iPod. If you want to run Linux on your iPod, check out iPodLinux.org.

about time ...

[for_usenet]

I've been able to do this for the last year or so with Mac OS X - i.e. clone my entire OS and work environment, so I could move it between my G4 tower at work, and laptop at home. Nice to see linux finally get this ability too.

And for the work I do, I don't see a huge performance hit running off the firewire chain, though I probably would off USB ...

So it's commercial. Deal with it.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Sheesh, guys, just because it's a commercial announcement doesn't mean it's not "stuff that matters". This might be useful - or at least interesting - to some of the folks here that actually work for a living.

Personally I'd rather see more of this on Slashdot and less of the "New Star Wars III fanfict trailer released!".

Re:So it's commercial. Deal with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldnt be so bad if it had its own section... then you could block it from the front page. Like can with the "New Star Wars XXVVII trailer" posts

So, to sum it up

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Software company to offer yet another USB memory key bootable Linux distro. Only the bootable key is an expensive Ipod, and the computers you can run Linux on aren't the ubiquitous PC, but much more rare Macs.

Hmm, I'm sure all 14 potential users are jumping up and down with anticipation. Great market research guys...

Re:So, to sum it up

[kc8apf]

So, average slashdot reader completely misses the point and fails to realize that there are other markets outside of the home consumer.

Booting off an iPod or FireWire drive is incredibly useful for setting up a cluster of machines. You boot each machine with the FireWire drive which contains a distro that installs the cluster distro onto the cluster node. Essentially, plug it in, wait till it says it's done, reboot and move to the next node.

Re:So, to sum it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit you are so right, that just increased the potential market for this exponentially.

That huge own an ipod, setting up linux on mac hardware cluster market. Thats got to be a pretty big market... Compared to the fingers on one of my hands perhaps.

sounds like an ad to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder if I can supersize my order.

One question

[DogDude]

Why?

Specifically, why'd you pay so much for an iBook, just to get rid of the one thing that makes it valuable: the OS?

Why in the hell would you run Linux instead of OSX?

To me, that sounds like somebody who buys a Ferrari, then swaps out the engine for a Chevy 4 cylinder. It makes no sense, whatsoever.

Re:One question

[micromoog]

What, exactly, makes OSX the "Ferrari engine" in your analogy, other than Apple's excellent marketing department?

Re:One question

[CODiNE]

Simple answer... Linux is faster. I've heard that it can get better battery life than OS X also. Don't get me wrong I love OS X, it's simply not the end all of OS's. You're also forgetting that I can still run OS X inside of Linux at native speed. As for why I bought it in the first place, I think it's entirely unfair of you to imply that the only value in a Mac is it's OS. As for price, when I got my iBook it was a better value than comparably priced PC laptops so again you're being unfair to Apple there. They really make nice machines. Oh, and I hate x86 chips.

Re:One question

[biophysics]

Why in the hell would you run Linux instead of OSX?

May be Linus knows the answer

Re:One question

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the fact that this is Slashdot, Linux is also not the end all of OS's.

Re:One question

[CODiNE]

No, that would be the HURD. ;-)

Old world macs don't support OS X (officially)

[johnny cashed]

Of course, Old world macs aren't firewire bootable either. But YDL is very fast on old world macs compared to OS X via Xpostfacto on old world hardware. (which is still good if not aged hardware) I'm currently running OS X on a G3 upgraded Powercomputing clone (thanks to Xpostfacto). at 420Mhz, it is slow compared to YDL on a Beige G3 266. So it is either OS 9 or YDL on old hardware. It is getting harder to get modern web browser features on OS 9.

Re:Old world macs don't support OS X (officially)

[Anonymous Coward]

That Power Computing clone has a 50 MHz memory bus, and the Beige G3 has a 66 MHz memory bus. That has more to do with the speed difference you see than which OS is loaded. Hard drive speed makes a big difference too, but you have no info about that listed.

Re:Old world macs don't support OS X (officially)

[javaxman]

I'm currently running OS X on a G3 upgraded Powercomputing clone (thanks to Xpostfacto). at 420Mhz, it is slow compared to YDL on a Beige G3 266. So it is either OS 9 or YDL on old hardware. It is getting harder to get modern web browser features on OS 9.

My mother-in-law is using OS X on a Beige G3 PowerMac.

She knows it's slow compared to modern machines, but it's a heck of a lot more capable than the 486/66 it replaced... for her uses, it appears to be fast enough, though I can certainly see why Apple doesn't support that configuration for OS X. No built-in USB, for starters. She's stuck using 10.2, not that it's been a problem yet. Some day, we'll have to get her a Mac mini, I guess.

I suppose I'm just saying that when it comes to computers, speed is relative. OS X on a G3/266 is still faster ( not to mention better ) than Win95 on a 486/66.

Just to head off the guys saying I should have given her YDL... is it really ready for your 70-year-old mother-in-law?? Seriously, she had enough trouble with OS X...

Re:Old world macs don't support OS X (officially)

[johnny cashed]

I tried and tried to get OS X on my particular beige G3. I was never able to get it to load. I even got a newer ROM module for it. It runs YDL very snappy. As for one's 70yo In-laws, I wouldn't give them linux unless they really wanted it. And yes, I certainly know that speed is relative. My fastest machine is the aforementioned 420Mhz powermac clone. It dates from 1997. I'm looking forward to getting a mini, it would be my first new mac. I used second hand equipment almost exclusively, it is alot cheaper that way.

Re:Old world macs don't support OS X (officially)

[zogger]

the iCab guy isn't doing a classic OS version anymore?

Re:Who in their right mind...

[DogDude]

OK, so my post got modded a troll. I guess Slashdot never changes... but I'm curious... can a single person give one single good reason to install Linux onto a Mac? I've read every post, and not a single one mentions why somebody would do this.

Re:Who in their right mind...

[i_should_be_working]

This might be fun for a hobbyist with lots and lots of extra time and money

So you can't conceive of having $500 and an hour to spare?

Has it occured to you that since there are companies making money from selling and servicing Linux on ppc, that this must be more than an 'obsure hobby'? Did you see the article earlier today about Linus and his mac? And all the comments from people stating how they too would like to run Linux on ppc hardware?

Patents!

[Anonymous Custard]

You know how you can take a normal thing, like reading, and patent it by appending "on the internet"?

Can I patent normal things, but append "when done by Linus"?

Surely that will lead me to profit.

Re:Patents!

[Dizzle]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that only gets you as far as ?????...

not the only firewire trick with the firmware

[moosesocks]

the firmware loaded onto macs nowindays is quite impressive in that it can do all sorts of things with firewire. booting off of a firewire device is one of the more tame 'tricks' it can do.

OpenFirmware can also make your mac pretend that it's a firewire hard drive. Connect the mac to another machine (another mac or a PC that can read HFS+ partitions), and boot up the machine while holding down the T key. Before the OS loads, the computer enters target disk mode, and every hard drive attached to that computer appears as a normal firewire device to the other computer.

I don't see why this wouldn't work with an ext3 or ReiserFS partition... it's a VERY useful trick for restoring a trashed system (which in all honsety rarely happens in Mac OS, but is rather common on Windows and Linux if you're compiling your own kernels and such)

Re:not the only firewire trick with the firmware

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why this wouldn't work with an ext3 or ReiserFS partition..

It does work with ext3 and reiser. If you format a partition in either/both, then boot into target disk mode, the whole device is shown.

does it still function as an ipod?

[spyrral]

because if so, I'm totally there. grab a 40gb ipod and have a portable boot drive and all my music!

Wow, you've got a Mac Portable running linux?

[johnny cashed]

I didn't know there was a distro for the 68000 16Mhz Mac Portable. How does it connect to the internet? 9600 baud? Just joking, I assume you're using a Powerbook or ibook.

Re:Wow, you've got a Mac Portable running linux?

[nine-times]

Actually, he's using correct terminology (I guess, insofar as there's "correct terminology"). Apple doesn't call their laptops "laptops", they call them "portables".

/royal wit cheese

Re:Who in their right mind...

[i_should_be_working]

because
a) some people think that ppc processors are better than intel's.
b) some people like Linux over the Mac Os.

Some people belong to both these sets.

Other comments have questioned putting Linux on Mac hardware, but they didn't call those who did so idiots or masochists. That's probably why they weren't modded as trolls. I probably would've just modded them redundant since someone asks this question every single time there's an article about Linux on ppc

Re:Who in their right mind...

[bomb_number_20]

troll...

Maybe some people don't like OS X. It is possible, you know. I run deb on my dual 1.8Ghz G5.

In some ways, OS X is the worst of both worlds.

It's FreeBSD... but, well, it's not FreeBSD. It has linux ports... but, well, it's not really linux either.

Another analogy: OS X is to *nix what tofu is to meat.

It looks great- but is missing some fundamental stuff that 'just works' under linux. The end result is that I have a great looking operating system that doesn't really run much that I like or do what i want it to do. Here are some quick examples off the top of my head:

* Finding a free FLAC player takes some work (MacAmp) whereas, under linux I have several choices.

* Apple's Java is seriously broken and I don't really have much of a choice. Under linux, I can use IBMs Java.

* Multiple Desktops would be nice under OS X.

* File browsing with Konquerer is unmatched. Period.

* Lack of decent Office packages under OS X. MS Office? Well, I said decent. Appleworks? sorry. With the exception of Openoffice.org, the rest are overpriced (Mariner Write etc.). Openoffice under OS X simply blows. IIRC, their OS X project was cancelled.

In short, linux is much more usable for me than OS X is. Besides, i just plain like it.

That being said, some downsides to linux on ppc include: broken sound on newer G5s and 3d support non-existent with nothing in sight.

No, asshole!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) You want your kids to meet the anonymous people on this site?
2) Your lemonade stand would run out of bandwith in about three minutes. Those kitchen tables don't provide a lot of server space.

this will kill iPods

[a1291762]

Their hard drives aren't designed for booting OSes from. Too much seeking will fry them.

Re:this will kill iPods

[siliconjunkie]

Their hard drives aren't designed for booting OSes from. Too much seeking will fry them.

This sounds right for older iPods, but I'm not so sure this applies to the latest batch. There have been specs passed around via forum threads that claim that the Toshiba drive used in iPods has a 20,000 hour MTBF (mean time between failure) -- which is a far cry from the 300,000+ MTBF for desktop drives. However newer (Gen 4) iPods use the Toshiba MK4004GA, which has a 300,000 hour MTBF, just as good as a laptop drive.

As far as I know, you are correct about Gen 1 and Gen 2 iPods (I'm not sure about Gen 3).

Re:this will kill iPods

[Moofie]

Do you have a citation for this, or just a harebrained internet rumor?

It's a hard drive. Pretty well-understood mechanism. Why would an iPod be more prone to dying than a 2.5" laptop drive?

Re:this will kill iPods

[my_breath_smells]

My Gen 1 10 GB suffered this fate (premature hard drive failure) from installing OS X onto it too many times... (developer builds and backups)

If I ever get another iPod, it will be for music, and only rarely accessed (but useful) files.

Re:Who in their right mind...

[argent]

Finding a free FLAC player takes some work [...]

There's at least two free FLAC quicktime plugins that let you play FLAC from any quicktime-capable application including iTunes.

Apple's Java is seriously broken [...]

There's at least two implementations of Java available.

Multiple Desktops would be nice under OS X

There's three applications for this, two of them free.

Lack of decent Office packages under OS X. [...]

All the open source ones, plus all the Classic Mac OS ones, plus Office X and Pages... that's not enough for you?

I run deb on my dual 1.8Ghz G5.

And the reason for paying the Apple Tax instead of getting an Opteron was...?

Portabality!!!!

[djroute66]

Who in their right mind would run a generic Linux instead of OS X?

Maybe because they want a portable workstation. Basically, take the iPod to Workstation-1 and work from there. Then take it home plug it in to your Workstation and keep all your settings, files, etc.

Would it be better if it was a Mac-X booting iPod?

Re:Who in their right mind...

[argent]

some people think that ppc processors are better than intel's.

Well, yeh, they let you build a cheaper and lower-power system with the same performanve because you're not paying the x86 translation penalty on every instruction.

But from the user level, the instruction set is pretty much irrelevant. Paying extra for a PPC and running Linux on it doesn't make any objective sense.

Look, I'm not an Intel apologist. I'm a long-time Intel anti-fan who's got a NeXT, a PDP-11, an AT&T UNIX PC, and used to run the Amiga sources group on Usenix. Oh, and I also have about six old Macs I've restored and upgraded to run OS X on. I've run more weird combinations of OS and processor than most people will ever see (mostly because there's almost no processor architectures other than the Wintel Virus left)... and I can't see the point.

Re:Who in their right mind...

[argent]

sources group on Usenix...

UseNET.

I die, I die, Oh the Embarassment!

iPODs have always booted

[DrTime]

I once installed OS X 10.1 on my 1st generation iPod (when it came out). I booted it a couple of times and used it a bit and later decided to use the disk space for something else (like backup storage). The 5 GB drive still works fine more than three years os almost daily use later. While those tiny disks may not have the stamina of a larger disk, it lasts longer than I thought it might. Back then, iPods came with a 90 warrenty. I really want to see how many years it is good for. May be I will put Panther on it (will it fit) or have it die trying.

Re:Who in their right mind...

[Ulric]

Hack value. The original siag.nu was Red Hat 4 on a Sparc 4; it is now Slackware, sort of, on an Alpha, a 486 and a very nice quad Pentiumpro. I have also run Linux (Mklinux) on an old Mac. All of which were valuable experiences.

I'm not saying that MacOS X isn't a useful operating system. You're not asking. ;-)

When Will the "Make it Boot Linux" Madness Stop?

[windowpain]

I left a ham sandwich on my desk today and forgot about it. When I got back three geeks were working to make it boot Linux.

Why on earth ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... would anyone want to run the least refined and intuitive Desktop OS on a machine that can run OS X?

No flame intended ... I am using OS X, XP and FreeBSD on a daily basis, but if any of my hardware is capable of running OS X, it certainly will: it's the strongest desktop combined with any *NIX power I might possibly need and thus way beyond anything Linux might or might not become in the years to come.

all hail

[djfray]

I for one welcome our Rendered-Otherwise-Useless-But-At-Least-It-Boots-L inux-Device Overlords.

Re:Who in their right mind...

[DogDude]

First off, if Linux only took an hour to install and to get working properly, you'd have tons and tons of Linux users (including myself).

Secondly, no, companies selling Linux products for PPC doesn't have any impact on whether or not this is an "obscure hobby". There are companies that do nothing but cater to obhscure hobbyists, and just the existence of a company doesn't indicate whether it's successful (remember the dot-com boom a few years ago)?

Yes, there are a handful of comments about people wanting to do it, but again, none say WHY other than "it'd be cool". I'm honestly curious as to why somebody would delibritely do this. This sounds like masochism of the higest order. Like I said in an earlier post, it sounds like somebody who buys a Ferrari and switches out the engine for a four cylinder Chevy made engine. It makes -zero- sense to me. If that makes me a troll, then yes, I'm a troll because I don't understand why in the hell anybody would but a half-assed Linux install on overpriced MAC hardware (which, without the OS, amounts to overpriced generic PC hardware these days).

Wine = Methadone

[SlightlyOldGuy]

Not being able to run Windows executables on Linux/PPC is a Good Thing(tm). Wine is Methadone to help Windows addicts to shake their habit. Make a clean break, people.

Don't feed trolls!

[xtermin8]

You're right that it is a ridiculous comparison for iPod vs USB key. However, I don't think speed would be a major issue (remember booting from floppies was routine back in the day) And perhaps YDLinux boots fast enough to make up for slow drive speed on iPods. Also, while usb booting is not standardized for PCs, there would be a standard for Apple hardware. There are a lot of interesting issues about using external drives, if only they had been in original article! Damn you Slashdot!

Re:Who in their right mind...

[bomb_number_20]

'There's at least two free FLAC quicktime plugins that let you play FLAC from any quicktime-capable application including iTunes.'

On searching, I found the FLAC links. Thanks- when I first got the machine, I looked and there wasn't much out there.

'There's at least two implementations of Java available.'

Maybe I should be more specific about the Java thing. I've been looking for a 1.5 SDK. Apple doesn't plan on releasing that until Panther and I can't find another one.

'Theres three applications for this, two of them free.'

You're right about the multiple desktops. As I said in my post, that list is a list of things off the top of my head.

'All the open source ones, plus all the Classic Mac OS ones, plus Office X and Pages... that's not enough for you?'

I stand by my original post.

'And the reason for paying the Apple Tax instead of getting an Opteron was...?'

What i was responding to in my post was the attitude that anyone running linux on a Mac is insane because OS X is the greatest thing on the planet. I disagree with that. I originally bought the machine to run OS X and I've since found that I'm more comfortable and productive under linux, so I switched back. I still use OS X, but not day in and day out.

For x86?

[TrollingOnTheRiver]

any info on doing something like this for an x86 box?

This is new for a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

... or did everyone forget that Linus now uses a ppc for his primary desktop machine?

Seems to me this is an easy way for the mac crowd to try Linux w/out trashing their systems. I'll leave whether thats a good idea(tm) to the flamesters.

Jon

More importanly

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats so big about this? We've been able to boot mac os x off out ipods since they first came out. Unless theres something I'm not understanding shouldn't you just be able to install mandrake or whatever on your ipod and boot w/o this companys help?

Honest Answer

[SilentJ_PDX]

Setting aside the "because I can" and "because it's Linux" arguments, what is the benefit of running YDL instead of OS X on one's Mac?

To be like Linus. :)

Asuming they can scrape up the money, how many crazed Linus fanboys do you think will try?

Re:Who in their right mind...

[argent]

What i was responding to in my post was the attitude that anyone running linux on a Mac is insane because OS X is the greatest thing on the planet.

That answers half the question (the 'why run Linux' part). It doesn't answer the other hald (the 'on a Mac') part.

I originally bought the machine to run OS X and I've since found that I'm more comfortable and productive under linux, so I switched back.

That answers that part of the question. You're running Linux on a Mac not because you want to run it on a Mac, but because you happen to have a Mac and you want to run Linux, that a fair enough summary?

Re:Who in their right mind...

[i_should_be_working]

You get modded a troll because you call something that obviously lots of people like half-assed and Chevy-like. If you had merely asked 'why would someone install Linux on expensive hardware that already comes with it's own OS that is arguably better?' you probably wouldn't have gotten modded down. But no, you called people idiots, masochists and compared their favourite OS to a cheap car. Them's trollin' words guy.

From first hand experience there are several distros that take less than an hour to install and configure. At least one took me less than half an hour.

So if I have multiple Volumes on my HDD

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a macintosh ( iBook G4 ) with an Lacie external FireWire400 harddrive with multiple Volumes (partitions ).
I used macosX's Disk Utility to split the 160MB HardDrive into 5 Volumes. Can YDL 4.0.1 install to specific Volume on the external HD WITHOUT touching the iBook internal HD??
Is YDL version on YDL website up to date??
I thought I saw YDL 4.0.1 on their website for some time ... ( I could be wrong )

Booting off your iPod is a bad idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

The hard drives in iPods are not meant to handle this type of load. Sure this may be alright if you use install os x or linux on it for an emergency drive but using it for continual use is really a bad idea! The specs of the drive are just not rated for this type of use.

External Firewire Drives Too!

[ryan_fung]

From TFA:
"Terra Soft has created a hybrid Yellow Dog Linux v4.0.1 #1 Install CD that incorporates the changes required to install to an iPod or FireWire drive from the graphical installer. This hybrid is immediately available through YDL.net Enhanced accounts at www.ydl.net."

Now I can play around with Linux on PPC without touching my current setup! Great!

Now the problem becomes: how long before the new ISOs become available to the public?

Re:Who in their right mind...

[bomb_number_20]

pretty much.

Apple Remote Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

lookit

Costs money, though, and the licensing looks funny.

Re:Who in their right mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of decent Office packages under OS X. MS Office? Well, I said decent. Appleworks? sorry. With the exception of Openoffice.org, the rest are overpriced (Mariner Write etc.). Openoffice under OS X simply blows. IIRC, their OS X project was cancelled.

NeoOffice/J (A java interface to OO.org) is very nice, does not require X11 to run, and is progressively becoming more and more "OS X-ish". I have been using it since I got my mac, and would highly recommend it to anyone.

Still Plays Music...

[billdar]

The cool thing about this is that the iPod maintains its ability to function as a stand alone music player.

It also still functions normally under iTunes, gtkpod, etc... It just now can boot YDL 4.0.1

yes

[vonsneerderhooten]

now put your money where your mouth is.

TerraSoft already successful - not matter of luck

[Anonymous Coward]

You make this sound like you are under the impression that TerraSoft have just had this idea of doing LinuxPPC and were trying to turn it into business without much of a visible chance to succeed.

Nothing could be further from the truth. YDL has been around for a long time and TerraSoft are already a successful business.

You may remember the news that the US Navy bought a few hundred Xserve for their submarine fleet. Well, those Xserve are running YDL and they were sold by TerraSoft. This was a multi million dollar project which involved both hardware and software customisation.

Last year, again, the US Army ordered some 1560 Xserves to build an HPC cluster. This cluster is running Y-HPC and Terrasoft landed the deal.

US government agencies including NASA and many Universities go regularly shopping for LinuxPPC solutions at TerraSoft. Their competitive advantage is that they deliver and support both the hardware and the software. They are an authorised Apple reseller but they are also an authorised IBM reseller for IBM POWER servers and they are a reseller for Freescale G4 reference boards and Amiga kits (whatever this is called right now).

Now, if you consider that Linus said that he considers x86-64 and PPC the two mainstream hardware platforms for Linux, if you further consider TerraSoft's position as a one-stop PPC and Linux shop, then you might say that they have a business model going with a good looking future.

BTW, I am not affiliated with TerraSoft, but I am a YDL user.

Bad idea...

[andymullins]

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? iPods are intended for short bursts of hard drive activity, and will likely overheat if used for anything more strenuous. Do this at your own risk!

Re:Bad idea...

[CarrionBird]

Mine gets quite hot after extended periods of HDD mode. I'd have to mod it for some ventilation before I tried it as a main drive.

Irivier...

[Shadow_139]

Whats the big deal..,?

I'v been doing this for years with my IRiver IHP-140 and now a IHP-340
No Crap software to load, plug it in and WinBlow/Linux/MacOS finds it as a Harddrive with no drivers to be installed.

I even use it in work with P2 & P3 systems and boot into Linux thought USB from it :)
Works every time....

That way I got it over the Apple iCrap$$$

iCab

[johnny cashed]

I don't know. Last time I used iCab, it would "expire" after awhile. It was annoying. Otherwise I like it as a browser.

Powercomputing Bus speeds

[johnny cashed]

Actually the PowerCenter Pro has a 60MHz bus. I'm overclocking the processor by 20MHz to get an even multiple (7x) to coax a little more performance out of it. It is actually a 400MHz processor. I'm using Fast/Wide SCSI as well. I do believe the eye candy (most of which is turned off) in OS X makes it seem slower that YDL 3.0 which what I'm using on the Beige G3. It just seems "snappier" but I haven't run benchmarks to quanify the speed.

Add me!

[CarrionBird]

see below

Perhaps because it's a great idea?

[FredFnord]

Anyway, that doesn't necessarily tell you why you'd want to boot into Linux from an external hard drive, but I bet someone wants it.

I have set up a nice server here on an xServe that doesn't even use an internal drive at all... boots Mac OS X Server off of an external hardware-mirrored firewire case.

If the computer dies, I can unplug the case from that machine, walk around the corner, plug it into the iMac in the test lab, restart, and have the server up again in, literally, less than 2 minutes. (But more than one. I tried it to make sure it would work, natch.) If it fails while I'm at home, I get a buzz on my cell phone, and I head down to the office (lovely) and do the same thing. And, if the internet access goes down at our building (as it did for three days once BEFORE we had this setup in place), I can nab the case, run home, plug the thing into my desktop machine at home, reboot, change the IP address, dink a bit with the nameserver, and the file server is available to the outside world again. No matter that they're all different models of Mac. No screws. No software RAID stuff to dick around with.

This is, of course, also doable with SCSI or USB2. USB2 is way lower performance. And SCSI is way more expensive, plus requires the machine you swap to to have a SCSI card in them. (I'm aware that most PCs don't have firewire, but you can't boot a PC off of this anyway. I have a few ideas about how I could make our server run off of a completely cross-platform external bootable firewire drive, so that you'd get the exact same data whether you used a Mac or a PC, but I don't have enough time to actually IMPLEMENT silliness like that.).

If I weren't doing this on a Mac, I'd certainly want to do it with Linux instead of Windows. And it is hardly beyond my comprehension to think that someone might prefer to do it on Linux using Apple hardware instead of, say, Dell.

-fred

Re:Who in their right mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

try NeoOffice j for the openoffice on mac part.

It is very, very nice and no need for x11

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