'Black Lab' Linux For G3 Clusters

ChristianC writes "'Black Lab' Linux, a relative of Yellow Dog Linux, has been released for PowerPCs (including G3s and iMacs). The distribution offers Beowulf and Cluster computing - 20 G3s at once! "

Comments

Usefulness of PPC Linuces?

[tgeller]

A bit of background: I've been using Macs since 1995, used to write and edit for MacWEEK, and have spoken at several Macworld Expos. I know all about the PPC's advantages -- I've run benchmarks at Ziff-Davis' labs. But when it came time for me to buy a Linux server, I went with an AMD-based machine. Simply put, practical considerations outweighed the architecture's advantages.

I won't bore you with the details, 'cause I'm sure you know them. Price, component availability, a community of support, yadda yadda yadda. Although I really wanted to use a PPC-based machine, I had to ask myself: What advantages would I gain?

Speed? Processor speed is virtually irrelevant in Internet serving, as bandwidth and disk access are the gating factors. Striking a blow against an evil company? Apple's not so clean, and certainly can't claim better corporate morality than AMD or the screwdriver shop where I bought my Linux box. (Needless to say, there will be no Microsoft code on it. :) )

Having said that, I'm glad to see Yellow Dog continuing with its plans. Until now, there have been three PPC Linux vendors that I know of: TurboLinux, mkLinux, and LinuxPPC Inc. (not the same as LinuxPPC.org). Frankly, none of them have approached the market with the resources, experience or commitment needed to make an impact. mkLinux is the side project of a book publisher; TurboLinux does PPC support as an afterthought (and devotes $0 to PPC Linux promotion AFAIK); and LinuxPPC Inc. has problems best not discussed in public. Yellow Dog seems to be making the first real stab at the market: I hope they can eventually convince people like me that running Linux on PPC is the best deal.

-- Tom Geller

Odd cross section argument

[timothy]

(Background: I've been through a number of Macintoshes and I'm on my fourth PC right now)


Like the other respondents to this point of view, I don't have an irate reply, but would agree with those other respondents as well that the total universe of Mac users is pretty broad.

Why would anyone want to run Linux / other Free OS on a Mac? That's not exactly the question here, but it seems to be lurking beneath the surface, and that same question was asked in a thread one level up from here.

I can't answer this for everyone, but here are the reasons I think that Linux and the Mac make a great combination, practically and normatively.

- Macs tend to have nice human engineering. The gulf is not as wide as it was 10 years or 5 years or maybe 2 years ago compared to the PC world, but well-labled parts, legible icons, attempts at friendlization still IMHO work better on Macs, but this comparison of course ignores that PC vendors vary tremendously in this respect.

- Macs use non-Intel chips ... the fact that they use not just a diff. manu but a different architecture is good for everyone. Here's a whopper of an analogy: what if paper was somehow constructed so it could only be written on with one sort of pen? That would seem silly, since there are lots of other choices. But software tend to be written to OSes themselves entirely dependent on their host hardware. Linux helps buck this trend (not as much as the BSDs, maybe, but still) by providing an OS which runs on multiple platforms.

- They look cool. That factor sells a lot of PCs, however unsatisfying that fact may be.

- Ubiquity. Not as many macs in the world as PCs, but the lopsided numbers / market share I think are misleading, since it's hard to go ten minutes in any US city and avoid seeing either an ad or an actual iMac / G3, not to mention older and still humming Macs.

- The Mac OS begs for a replacement, or at least whines a little. I use one at work (an iMac) and am actually fairly happy with it (Most of my complaints I list on my web page and will skip here) but it crashes all the time! I would love to be running an underlying *nix, whether it still looked like the basically-well-conceived Mac OS or like my home linux machine.

I don't understand why Apple pulled the plug on clones -- how about because they were making Apple look slow by releasing faster, cheaper machines? -- but I wish they hadn't. Then we could perhaps be running on a G3 PowerComputing box with SCSI, firewire and USB by now ...

anyhow. I don't have a home mac, but if I find a cheap one I'd like to run some free OS on it.

timothy