Linux Coming to Power Mac G5 67
Justen writes "Terra Soft, the people behind Yellow Dog Linux (YDL), announced that they will be supporting the new Power Mac G5. Since they are an Apple Authorized Reseller, you can purchase your Power Mac G5 through Terra Soft and have YDL pre-installed on a separate partition from Mac OS X. According to Terra Soft, 'as Yellow Dog Linux was in 2000 enabled for the IBM Power3 by IBM Lab and Linuxcare, and subsequently for the Power4, the effort to support the 970-based Apple computers is anticipated to be completed with relative ease.' Life is good. Anyone wanna loan me $2,000?"
Never understood this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Never understood this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Never understood this. (Score:0, Insightful)
The question is, now that you've bought your nice, new G5, why would you want to run Linux on it? The only thing Linux has over Mac OS X is the ability to use software that's already compiled and packaged for IA-32, and that's not true when you're using a PowerPC. And Mac OS X has tons of advantages over Linux. So what's the rationale here?
Re:Never understood this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But one questions remains... (Score:5, Insightful)
For me that's 9 words in 6 minutes or a more realistic (for a Troll) 1.5 WPM.
Mavis is safe and sound; more importantly, she isn't on slashdot.
Re:But one questions remains... (Score:4, Insightful)
OS X began life on m68k NeXT boxes, not PPC hardware. Linux is also 100% native on PPC hardware. The last numbers I saw showed Linux PPC outperformed OS X on the same hardware. I like some of the ideas behind Mach w/ a BSD server. Too bad they put the BSD server in the kernel address space for performance reasons. The driver gap is largely historical at this point, but still a valid but minor concern.
You missed your opportunity to jab Linux in the ribs. The tender spot here is Linus switching the entire VM subsystem out in the middle of the 2.4 serries. The weakness in the development model is that it is less conservative with no PHB breathing down Linus's neck. The "bunch of punk kids writing a kernel" argument just doesn't hold water. Some of the most respected coders of our day contribute to the Linux kernel, including some very telented professionals at IBM. Sure lots of rubbish gets submitted, but it gets filtered through a heirarchy or very good coders. Linus may be a little overwhelmed, but that results in some good improvements getting dropped on the cutting room floor rather than rubbish making it into the kernel. Per man-hour, the Linux kernel development is therefore very inneficient, but you have an absolutely huge number of coders.
Your argument about not letting people see the QuickTime and OpenGL code is way off. The same effect could be gotten by opening the cod