Yellow Dog Linux v4.1 Released

An anonymous reader writes "The most polished Yellow Dog Linux has been released with the usual distribution updates such as kernel 2.6.15-rc5, KDE 3.4.2, GNOME 2.12.1, and GCC 3.4.4 as well as support for new hardware such as new PowerBooks and preliminary support Dual and Quad-core G5s. Other new features include firewire drive installation and booting, PCMCIA modem and cellphone card support, and Atheros wifi card support."

Comments

Yea,

[dcapel]

But does it.... damn.

AirPort Extreme?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it support AirPort Extreme?

It's been a long time coming, and not support wireless in any modern PowerBook or iBook makes Yellow Dog a bit of a non-starter...

Re:AirPort Extreme?

[caseih]

Even more of a non-starter is the lack of support for nvidia's video chipsets. This means no power management. No sleep, no screen dim. My PB 12" will be sticking with Panther for now.

Re:AirPort Extreme?

[ndansmith]

Broadcom never released the specs of that chipset to developers and never made drivers of their own, so it is not really the fault of Yellow Dog. However, some plucky hobbyists reverse-engineered the chipset and have released drivers (that should work, going to try myself after lunch) here: http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/. I would have to recommend using Ubuntu on Macs anyway. It's PPC install disc is very handy and easy, all the hardware except AE works "out of the box," and if you have an open partition on your Mac (which can be tricky in itself), it will install in there automatically and also auto configure a nice simple boot loader.

Now if Macromedia would just release Flash for Linux PPC . . .

Re:AirPort Extreme?

[Kelson]

It's not up to Yellow Dog, or else they would have had drivers a long time ago -- Broadcom will neither write an open-source driver nor release the specs to let anyone else write one.

Re:AirPort Extreme?

[Ziktar]

Actually, thanks to some clever reverse engineering, it is up to Yellow Dog now. The folks at http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/ have released an open source driver for Airport Extreme. In fact, I'm using it now to submit this post on Gentoo running on a 12" Powerbook. Instructions can be found here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-409194.html

Re:AirPort Extreme?

[billdar]

Yeah, its available as a yum download after installing.

*posted from airport extreme on a ydl 4.1 ibook g4

Re:AirPort Extreme?

[bhiestand]

I wish I had mod points for you. Many thanks, finally have working wireless on my laptop! :)

Forgive the question

[Carpe PM]

I am unfamiliar with this distro. Was it developed solely for Democrats?

Quad core G5?

[joib]

Will these ever see the light of the day?

Re:Quad core G5?

[Bazzalisk]

It's referinng to Apples "Quad G5" (like the one I'm typing at right now) - which are actualy dual-dual-core-processor machines (ie. two dual-core G5 processors).

Re:Quad core G5?

[n00tz]

In theory, as long as it supports the PPC arch and SMP a jump from 2-->4 cores shouldn't be an issue. Testing it with such does provide a bit of reassurance. I run a pair of Opteron 265s on Suse 10. I wasn't sure how it was going to work because they didn't outright claim that 2 dual cores were supported, but it worked no problem.

Polished?

[Karma Farmer]

The most polished Yellow Dog Linux has been released...

The only dog release I've ever polished was brown, not yellow...

The Problem with Yellow Dog Linux...

[Noodlenose]

...is that they are pursuing a business model that has come to the end of its natural life: there won't be a lot of PPC computers around anymore. How many new installations will Yellow Dog have when Apple stops selling PPCs?

Sad, but true:

This Linux has expired. It has gone to meet its maker. It's a stiff. Bereft of life it rests in peace.

Re:The Problem with Yellow Dog Linux...

[squiggleslash]

That's one possibility. Likewise it may be the extreme opposite. As OS X support dries up for PPC over the next ten years, Yellow Dog may be the only genuinely supported operating system for the existing base of PPC machines. More realisticly, it'll share that role with a few variants of the *BSDs.

That's not going to be a large number, with most of the users likely to be people building little servers etc, but it'll be a dominant player in that small market, which may be higher than the "Number of people who want to run GNU/Linux on a box that comes with OS X" in 2006.

Rubbish.

[torpor]

You think all those PowerPC computing systems are just going to stup running because Apple doesn't care about them any more? Forget it, thats such fanboix marketdroid glib.

Fact is, those machines still represent a sizable market to YDL. Long after they're abandoned by Apple, all of those PPC chips could be pressed into using Linux ..

Re:Rubbish.

[kalidasa]

Yes, when OS X 10.6 (or OS Xi, or whatever they call it) comes out Intel only (and it will), Yellow Dog will be the obvious alternative. That said, even Apple boxes don't last forever: most of those machines will go out of daily use by 2011, and by 2016, the Apple PPC market will be only slightly larger than the Amiga market is today.

Re:Rubbish.

[i_should_be_working]

In addition, Yellowdog runs on all PPC machines, not just Macs. Yellowdog themselves sell non-mac powerpcs.

Re:Rubbish.

[Kelson]

Not to mention IBM's own PowerPC line. There are other sources for PowerPC computers, and I believe TerraSoft has deals with all of them. It seems like every other week they put out a press release about some new YDL/PowerPC system that doesn't have the name Apple involved.

Resubmitted?

[Bazzalisk]

Havve the kernel modifications that allow it to run on dual and quad core G5s been submitted up-stream?

Not because I'd liek a Gentoo/PPC64 install on my Quad or anuything ...

Java Support

[MarkX]

Does anyone here run Java applications, such as JBoss, ant, javac, javadoc, etc. under YDL? I looked at the package and there does not seem to be a JDK shipped with the distribution. I'd like to consider YDL as a server OS, but lacking Java it's a no go.

Thanks,

Mark

Re:Java Support

[BokLM]

Java is not open source, and they may not be allowed to distribute that shit^w^w it.
But you might be able to install it yourself ... Does Sun have a JVM for Linux/PPC ?

Re:Java Support

[MarkX]

Thanks for the politics. Already knew that Java wasn't OSS. No doubt we'll get there eventually. (cf. Apache Harmony Project) And no Sun does not have a Linux/PPC distribution of the JDK.

Basically the question in short is: Is there a third party JDK that will run on YDL? I know that IBM makes other Linux/Power JDK's. I just don't know if those work under YDL.

Thanks,

Mark

Re:Java Support

[BokLM]

Actually blackdown seems to have the JDK 1.3 for Linux/PPC :
ftp://ftp.oleane.net/pub/java-linux/JDK-1.3.1/ppc/ FCS/
However, no 1.4 or 1.5.

But the 1.5 from IBM seems to be avaible on Linux/PPC ...

Re:Java Support

[dorkygeek]

The IBM JDK works flawlessly on Debian/PPC.

Re:Java Support

[MarkX]

Thanks, that is great information.

Mark

Yellow Dog versus Ubuntu versus Debian

[BokLM]

I'm going to buy a PowerBook 12' soon. I don't know yet if I'll run Yellow Dog, or Ubuntu, or Debian.

Anyone tried them ? How does Yellow Dog and Ubuntu support the hardware ?

Also, can anyone who tried running Linux on a new PowerBook can tell me if all the hardware is correctly supported ?

Re:Yellow Dog versus Ubuntu versus Debian

[John Nowak]

The new hardware is not all correctly supported. You will have no wireless. Everything else works fine for me on my newish powerbook with an ATI chipset using Ubuntu. To be honest, I wouldn't waste time with Yellow Dog, given the absurd amount of effort that goes into creating solid deb repositories with PPC packages for Ubuntu and Debian.

Re:Yellow Dog versus Ubuntu versus Debian

[Kelson]

Well, you won't get wireless networking with any of 'em (since there aren't any open-source drivers for the Airport Extreme), but YDL 4.0 does fairly well otherwise with the 2004 model 12" PowerBook. I believe there may have been an issue with sound, but to be honest, it's so long since I rebooted the laptop into Linux, so it may have been fixed ages ago.

Re: don't forget PowerLinux

[ubiquitin]

There's another distro out there, called PowerLinux which seems to be Debian-based. The focus of it is on the Mac mini, I think.

Re:wireless support in PowerLinux

[ubiquitin]

The powerlinux page for the Mac mini points to another page with details about the wireless driver. I agree with you that the ppc debian repositories are pretty extensive at this point.