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Mandriva Businesses

Mandrake For PowerPC Is Coming 83

Posted by timothy from the the-answer-is-*yes* dept.
Nikato Muirhead writes: "Need I say more?" and points to this page at LinuxToday which says that Mandrake is preparing a beta -- for PPC. Considering the price of a used-but-decent G3, this sounds fun to get in on. (E-mailing sympa@linux-mandrake.com with "SUB cooker-ppc" in the body will start you on the road to beta-testerhood.)
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Mandrake For PowerPC Is Coming More

Mandrake For PowerPC Is Coming

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  • Re:Not really a PPC distribution... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mandrake for the PowerPC should actually be that. I used to work for Mandrake and actually developed the support for the RS/6000 and other PowerPC machines. There should be full support in there for all PowerPC machines, unless they've taken stuff out. I haven't worked there for almost a year now, but i hear they have new people working on the project.. glad it didn't die after i quit :)

  • Re:Why do we care? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Man,what a fucking dweeb. Please stick with your toy unix, people who use Macs are the hipest,smartest people I know and that ain't you.

  • Now if Apple can get off its corporate butt and bring true SMP support to OS X, then I'm sold on the upcoming dual-733 G4 systems :-)
    What's missing? p-threads and MP-Tasks both work on X, on single or dual CPU machines. OK, MP-Tasks don't work within Classic, but I believe they plan to support them there at some point.

    -dair

  • iBook! (Score:1)

    by Kuroyi ( 211 )
    The price of a used-but-decent G3?! Dude, get an iBook [apple.com]. Or even a Cube [apple.com].
  • He isn't talking about Classic, he is talking about running them in the MacOS X environment (Carbon/Cocoa).
  • I've heard about rootless X on OS X, but I have no idea where to find it! Any leads on where I can find it?

    Try the XFree86 on Darwin and Mac OS X page [mrcla.com]. Most of the work is done through the XonX project at Sourceforge [sourceforge.net]. I believe that in order to get the rootless X in Aqua working, you need to build the latest XFree86 and XonX from CVS. Check the archives of the Darwin Development mailing list at darwinfo.org [darwinfo.org] for postings by Torrey Lyons on how to compile it.

  • I really hope you get out a beta with a working installer soon! I want to try it out as soon as possible! But because I only have a 33k6 connection at home I need an ISO first...

    Thank's for the effort!

  • GET OUT OF MY COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!!!

    now I put some more text because of the gay lameness filter.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • Well, no, I can't, but how much can a 1394 card cost? Another $100? And honestly, I have never met anybody who would ever, ever do that. Can you get 140 frames/second in Quake 3 at 1024x768 resolution on your G3? That's something I use daily, and something I care about much more than a "feature" like making home movies.

    And I'll be glad to stop the "non-sense comparison" as soon as Apple drops its nonsense benchmarks in which they claim that a 500 MHz G3 is faster than a 1000 MHz x86.

    I develop software on a Mac. It is a painful experience. As far as I am concerned, the MacOS is a steaming pile of feces. Nothing you can list as an "advantage" of the Mac is an advantage to me, so don't even bother listing any more.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • Still, as the owner of a PPC G3 and a K6-2, both running at 400 Mhz, I can tell you that the gcc performance I get is much greater on the ppc side. It's roughly comparable to the speed I observed on an Athlon 1G system. Only now that I have Linux on both can I see what the G3 marketing hoopla was really all about, since now both systems run the same sw; the ppc 750 (or G3) really does have much better performance than equivalent-speed i386 systems

    With all due respect, you're comparing one of Apple's top processors with one of the worst x86 processors ever. For Less than $60 you can get a 800 MHz Duron, try it with that. And anecdotal evidence about compiling being "roughly comparable" on PPC 400 and x86 1000 doesn't hold much water with me. Compiling what? How long did it actually take? Most systems built around k6-2 processors that I've seen use inferior motherboards and memory, which I'm sure play a role in your observation.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • Ahh the Mac zealots... another great reason to not use a Mac. You're a scary lot. You read MacKiDo religiously, right? I pity you.

    Tough guy, posting Anonymously.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • MacOS X can run OmniWeb, IE, Netscape, Mozilla, iCab, Opera, Lynx, and anything else that you can compile (with a little work). How's that less than Linux? Not trying to flame, just curious.
  • Excuse me ? i don't see any connection between Linux or Mandrake and Jew, here...
  • What is the rationale behind not installing these utlities to begin with? They're tiny and harmless.
  • I've had Telnet in 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2. Not sure about before then though. Pretty sure.
  • Many people know what a Mandrake freak i am, but I must say that I have a lot of faith in this one. Mandrake always has good kernel patching and packaging, and I think that they will be able to get the right stuff into the PPC kernels, among all the other cool stuff, like their smoothe installer.

    Mike Roberto
    - GAIM: MicroBerto
  • Mandrake started out as RH with KDE as default and i586 binaries. This stayed the same up untill 7.x and now 8.x. They still have almost direct compatiblity with RH for rpms (almost rememeber....). They've now gone their own way, especially with all the "drake" utils. I think only SuSE has support for th RS/6000 (I assume that is what you are using to run AIX currently).
    Good distro over all. 8.0 has a lot less bloat now with their server install.
  • Omni is definitely cool, and I switch between IE and Omni all the time. Unfortunately, my University's stupid webpage is compliant with practically no web browsers, so I need to use IE to access it (and have it work).

    I've heard about rootless X on OS X, but I have no idea where to find it! Any leads on where I can find it?
  • I'd like to try Debian (on i386 - no way is my Mac OS X getting replaced), but trying to download an ISO from their website is like trying to pull my own teeth out. And they have no FTP installation options like the *BSDs have. Time being, it's just too inconvenient.

  • Mandrake refused to format my second physical hard drive and said : "swapon (hda?) error : invalid argument."

    swapon is the program that sets the kernel's virtual memory settings. This should give you a start in troubleshooting the system.

  • Actually X is BSD, not Linux...

    Also you really don't want to mess with the system internals, or future updates may totally kill your system. It's happened to me when the 10.0.2 update came around.

    The fact is that OS X is, to paraphrase Apple's old marketing lines, "UN*X for the rest of us." It's simply not well done for those of us who like to get under the hood. That's the reason why it runs root-less unless you specify it. And once you do enable root you're pretty much on your own.

    My advice would be, install the SuSE distro using FTP, install yaboot/ybin, and configure it to triple-boot SuSE, OS 9 and OS X. Then you can poke around and see how different Linux is from X.

    TAE (Visit my web site!) [clevershark.com]

  • Actually you could build this for less than that, and dump the deskstar for a Maxtor diamond 60G.

    Moot point though, as there are distros around for much more obscure and expensive platforms like Sparc and Alpha. Personally I'm not sure what the point is in switching from Solaris to Linux, especially now that Gnome is touted by the Sun people...

    Still, as the owner of a PPC G3 and a K6-2, both running at 400 Mhz, I can tell you that the gcc performance I get is much greater on the ppc side. It's roughly comparable to the speed I observed on an Athlon 1G system. Only now that I have Linux on both can I see what the G3 marketing hoopla was really all about, since now both systems run the same sw; the ppc 750 (or G3) really does have much better performance than equivalent-speed i386 systems.

    Now if Apple can get off its corporate butt and bring true SMP support to OS X, then I'm sold on the upcoming dual-733 G4 systems :-)

    TAE (Visit my web site!) [clevershark.com]

  • Once the black sheep of CPUs, the PowerPC is certainly getting a lot of attention on the Linux side these days. First mkLinux, then LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog, SuSE, more recently Debian, and now Mandrake. The times they are a-changing indeed.

    This being said, how many distros can the ppc user base support? I'm certainly a backer of linux on the PPC; I'm running SuSE now, and I am planning on trying a Debian install once I figure out a way to install it without floppies (Macs haven't had (internal) floppies since 1998) but I can't imagine that there's much of a business case for another distro. Unless they can do it better than the others, and really get the word out about that, it's a bit of a doomed enterprise.

    1. Try SuSE... their installer definitely works, I'm using SuSE for PPC right now... You can even do a full install over the net by using their "suseboot" partition.
    2. er, stick with i386 arch systems then... or simply don't install MOL. Actually you might want to check out yaboot and ybin on the the penguinppc.org web site [penguinppc.org] (under Hardware/Blue and White G3) which work pretty well if you have two drives.
    3. the state of the kernels is definitely not what it should be. Much as I feel the flames descending upon me as I type, it's obvious that no one bothers to QA the ppc parts of the kernel before release time. So far I've not been able to compile a single kernel from the standard source tree, although I must also say that Benjamin Herrenschmidt (sp?) is doing a wonderful job at bringing improvements for those of us who want to optimize our ppc kernels.

    TAE (Visit my web site!) [clevershark.com]

  • A few days ago, the big news was that Mandrake had fired everybody in a last ditch costcutting move to save the company. Now we have this story, and all these comments, about new Mandrake products for everything from Macs to garage door openers. I don't get it.
  • People who choose not to use Linux and take the time to explain their reasons in a public forum should be applauded, not given the back of someone's hand.

    The argument that anyone who critiques Linux is under an obligation to write code to make it better is just plain silly. Writing professional code is hard, it takes a lot of time, And, it takes a lot of apprenticeship time learning how to code.

    Linux is following in the tradition of Unix, in that many, if not most, of the developers working on it are self-selected coders who bring a coder's perspective to the user interface. KDE and GNOME are the first, imperfect, attempt to build inerfaces that a non-coder might actually try to use. But, I don't want everyone who criticizes KDE/GNOME to jump in there and start writing code to "improve" things, because most of them won't know squat about interface design.

    I want professionals writing the code I use.

  • Whether or not something is "constructive criticism" or a "potshot" is, I suppose, a metter of definition. But, people who want to use a product are under no obligation at all to help the manufactuers of the product. People who use products are called consumers. If I go to the store and buy one of the Linux distributions, I'm a consumer buying a product. If it does not make me happy, for whatever reason, I am perfectly free to tell the world why I don't like it. That freedom to express my opinion does not encompass an obligation to provide any kind of constructive criticism to the manufacturers of the distribution.

    On the other hand, if I consciously decided to join the Linux community because I believed the ideological goals of that community had merit (and sometimes they do), then I take on at least something of an oligation to do more than rant and rave, and to add something constructive to the mix.

    If Linux development stays within the closed loop of the latter group, it will never have a future with the former group.

  • Aww c'mon. Something illegal? Macs have always held their value well. That's one of the nice things about having a machine that isn't the same as everyone elses.
  • Why do all distros claim to be a PPC distributions? But actually they are Linux on Mac distributions. There are a lot of differences between G3, iMac and RS/6k for example. Those are all PPC platforms and I still would like to see a single distro that would install on all of them. All the machines could use the same bootloader (yaboot) and the same binaries, but kernel would have to be different for everyone of them. I never saw three or four different kernels on one distribution. I hope this will change someday or even better that it's changed already... :)

    Bigwhale!
    ---------------
    I never wanted to go anywhere. I'm happy here...
  • What company *won't* die sooner or later?
  • You aren't very wise then ;-) Telnet means cleartxt passwords on the net... bad,bad, bad!
    Take the time to learn and use ssh.

    Edo
  • I second that, perl-devel is required and harddrake works perfectly.
  • If anyone is beta testing, what are the system requirements? If it's like LinuxPPC, it should run okay on my 7200 I have laying around. Hopefully the requirements won't be too steep.
  • I have had bunches of problems with my Mandrake install.
    • Had to re-build perl from source because I couldn't build a module because of missing headers
    • Cannot, no matter how many fscking versions of the gcc source and/or egcs get a cross compiler to build.
    • Flaky hardware detection software (call me when HardDrake actually works)
    • Cannot, no matter how hard I twiddle the configuration get both an internal network working at the same time as a ppp dialup.
    All in all, the pretty GUI configuration tools just aren't ready for prime time yet. I think it's time for GNU/Debian land...

    Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
  • Indeed. And it's not just on PowerPC that this problem arises - I'm running Mandrake 8.0 on my x86 box. Something Mandrake's done has completely shafted XFree86. If you want to use the DRI, you have to run under a 16-bit graphics depth.

    Fine, not a problem, except in this depth changing resolution causes X to die and restart. Try it - I've heard reports from people running all different kinds of GFX card. I first noticed this when I tried to run tuxracer and it tried to go full-screen and change mode - boom. So for now, if you're running Mandrake 8.0, you either have 24-bit graphics and no DRI but you can change resolution, or you get 16-bit window-mode only 3D. And you can't even do ctrl-alt-+ or -. Even some screensavers that run in different modes to what you're using cause X to die!

    Let's just hope that they fix this monumental screw-up in the PowerPC port - if anyone knows a fix or workaround for this on x86 I'd be very grateful.

  • Umm... Aparently you've never looked at Debian.

    So it's changed already...
  • I am planning on trying a Debian install once I figure out a way to install it without floppies

    You have two choices:

    1. Install from CD - you will boot from CD (you know, the 'c' key after chime). You need bootable CD, of course.
    2. Install from network (how I did it). Go to Open Firmware prompt (cmd-option-o-f after chime), type "boot enet:0". It will use bootp or dhcp and tftp to load kernel image over network. It also helps to have NFS mountable root prepared somewhere.
  • WOOOOOHOOOOOOO. This is exciting news.
  • As a PowerPC owner, why should I care?

    For starters, more operating systems on your hardware mean more choices, and I've never seen a case where more choices was a bad thing. Besides, having some serious competition on their own hardware will just keep Apple honest, and maybe keep their prices down (MacOS X is overpriced IMO).

    Also, if you have any older PPC hardware, such as pre G3 machines, OS X isn't an option and Linux runs quite well on the older hardware. Why throw out that PPC7200, it makes a great IP Router or nice mail server, or decent http server... etc. etc.

    and then there's Mac OS X. OS X has most of the cool stuff you can get out of a *NIX box, plus a really nice GUI.

    While I agree that the GUI in MacOS X is pretty, the rest of the OS leaves a lot to be desired. On my Dual Processor G4s, the most recent release runs slower than the public beta did. Also, I'm had a hell of a time getting open source software to compile on MacOS X that was a breeze to install on Linux. PostgreSQL, SSH are a couple that I just gave up on, and eventually I gave up on MacOS X altogether.

    I also have many issues with MacOS X, other than getting decent software to compile on it. 1) It doesn't ship with up to date utilities (vi, but not VIM is an example). 2) I'm really more of a BASH kind of person 3) I really HATE all those @#$@#$ directories with uppercase letters!!! I'm writing a shell script, not a @#$@#% novel! 4) The performance leaves a lot to be desired. 5) I like windowmaker damnit! Why can't Apple put the NeXT interface into MacOS, at least as an option. It isn't like they didn't buy the damn company! 6) Anti-alised fonts all over the place give me a headache.

    I could go on, but this isn't an anti-MacOS X thread.

    Besides, I now have several G4s running Linux and they have been rock solid. More info on these servers here. [mcgill.ca]

    maybe they'll be the first to make a Linux distro for PPC that doesn't suck

    Well, I don't know what distros you've been using, but I've been very happy with YellowDog [yellowdoglinux.com], and they are about to ship version 2.0 [yellowdoglinux.com], starting tomorrow.



    And, no, I don't work for Terrasoft (the distributors of YellowDog), I simply really like their product.
  • Two years ago, there were already some people working on a Mandrake for ibook/imac. There was a domain name called "imandrake.com". Actually, they didn't release anything until the Mandrake version was full-featured enough and easy to use to respect the Mandrake way! They didn't want to release anything that would have been too difficult to install or with the need to go through MacOS (with BootX) to launch the system. Now Yaboot seems stable enough for that purpose. Anyway I don't know if they ported Diskdrake yet! That would be a revolution in the Mac/Linux world. (BTW, if you need some Mandrake t-shirts they just have opened http://www.mandrakestore.com [mandrakestore.com])
  • I've been a Mac user for a long time. I'm also infected with the disease just about all geeks have: I am constantly putting in various non-standard hardware. The problem is Apple doesnt have the best record when it comes to supporting third-party hardware. For example, I bought a MicroConversions(Mac 3dfx-card maker) Voodoo 2 and a MacAlly USB card. However, both MIcroConversion and 3dfx(who made some decent but bugy reference drivers for mac) are long out of business ) and Apple has pretty much forgotten about thier severly buggy USB card drivers. With all the various unsupported hardware in my system Mac OS X won't even install. Apple has basically left all us legacy hardware owners out in the cold. This is the perfect oppurtunity for Open Source Developers to get a hold on the Mac community. Furthermore, it cant possibly be to hard to get Mac OS X native applications to run on a Mac linux distro, and we can always boot into classic for older classic apps. Any developer that shows they actually care about users with older hardware, instead of just expecting us to buy thier newest peice of translucent plastic(for the record I have a beige G3) will get my hardware. -
  • It's called 'satire' - look it up!

    I deserved that :)

    That'll teach me to post replies late at night ;)

    'Reports indicate the phrase "All your atom are belong to us" was heard shortly before the blinding flash occured.'

  • I'll get modded down for this, but here goes:
    As an OS X user, I don't particularly see much point in switching to Mandrake. I mean, I've already got a real *nix that runs all of my unix apps, is open source where it counts, and has a GUI that kicks ass. Really, what advantage does switching to Mandrake (or any Linux PPC) give me?

    I think part of the appeal of Linux on PPC has always been to run a real OS on slick Apple hardware instead of the crufty P.O.S. that Apple was pushing. Six months ago, I would have been really excited to see Mandrake PPC. OS X changed that, though, and I don't think I'm alone here. [slashdot.org] Don't get me wrong. I love Mandrake, Linux, and the free software community, but I just don't see anything compelling about Linux PPC anymore now that all Macs come pre-installed with OS X.

  • Yep, MacOS X is overpriced. Well, I'll buy your next operating system the next time you offer it under $120 and it offers the same abilities.

    Compare to Windows 98- ~$200- $100 for Windows 98, another $100 for Second Edition (which just fixed all the errors in the first edition).

    Well, if you dislike OS X so much, go back to Linux. I like Yellow Dog, too, but it's much more work than OS 9 and OS X. Of course, I'm not a developer as you must be.
  • That is just the way markets work if the punters are ignorant. The economic theory of free and efficient markets is predicated on people having full information (like knowing the different prices/products available). If, as you say, people are dumb enough to waste money on tat on ebay... good luck to them (and better luck to the sellers ;-)
    m
  • "He who has the right to criticize, has the right to help."
  • "Writing professional code" isn't the only way to help. The give-and-take applies on numerous levels. I'd hope such critics would at the very least share constructive criticism (e.g., "what makes a GUI great") directly with the appropriate parties along with their pot-shots.
  • I agree that right != obligation. I also agree that perpetuation of an "us versus them" mentality is a deterrent to open source development. I simply feel contructive criticism, properly directed, is a better means to bring about change, provided that is truly the goal.

  • Then you can at least swtich-hit and work with Linux, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9.1

    I tried to do this on an iMac with open firmware. I found it to be really difficult and finally gave up. Now I am just duel-booting Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X

  • Didn't they invent FireWire?
  • Testify, brother!
  • Fp YEAH! fuck ya all
  • Actually I was advocating Slack as a focused distro, not an "ultimate distro". It doesn't try to be one-size-fits-all. Those who like Slack's direction will be the most happy with it, but definitely not every Linux user.



    I'm an on-again, off-again Slack user, and I don't see the focus you're talking about. It ships with packages to allow one to use Slack as a web server, etc. yet it also ships with packages for KDE and GNOME, as well as a number of things that just have Slack running all over the place.



    So, what, it's more focused because it isn't as newbie-friendly? :-)

  • Well, they're [telnet, ftp, etc.] not even an an option in the installer.



    And thank God for that. Maybe people will stop using Telnet, finally.

  • So for God's sake install telnet already and quit bitching! Are you too lazy to install it, or what?



    $ which telnet

    /usr/bin/telnet

    $ rpm -ql telnet

    /usr/bin/telnet

    /usr/lib/menu/telnet

    /usr/share/icons/large/telnet.xpm

    /usr/share/icons/mini/telnet.xpm

    /usr/share/icons/telnet.xpm

    /usr/share/man/man1/telnet.1.bz2


    Interesting...and this on a Mandrake box. And from a Mandrake package.



    Look, I don't mean to sound harsh...but for God's sake, Mandrake isn't aimed at the one-size-fits-all distro market. And really, you do list some halfway-decent reasons for using telnet, but really, most people who are adequately served by Mandrake don't use telnet that often. What, you're running sendmail on Mandrake? Why? You're using a Mandrake box as a web server? Why?

  • 1. Someone, please someone, make an installer that works? I've tried all of them for PPC; there was a LinuxPPC installer (IIRC) that was broken, the FORTH code for the 'blessed' system partition was just wrong. SuSE is on my PPC machines right now because it needed the least work (for me, anyway) to get it running fast.

    Have you tried Debian GNU/Linux [debian.org]? Potato was released for PPC and despite all the complaints I've head about installing Debian, it was the easiest install I have ever done.

    2. Let's also see some "no MacOS, no way" things happening. I don't want MOL, I don't want to keep System around. I've never had much luck with the "official" method (the 800k Apple_Bootstrap parition trick) for having a MacOS-less PPC box. I have always used Mandrake on x86, and I hope they'll get this one right.

    Is your firmware Old World or New World? If it's New World You shouldn't have too many problems if you've set your boot arguments correctly in lilo.conf (for SUSE) or yaboot.conf (Debian). ybin/yaboot work fine for me on a MacOSless rev-A iMac running Debian Woody.

    3. Voodoo 3! I have a Mac-ized Voodoo3 gathering dust because none of the kernels seem to work, even the latest 2.4.x. Please, there are people with PPC boxes that aren't running ATI. Let's see some cool stuff happen!

    I don't have a Voodoo 3, so I don't know if any of your problems are caused by it. In general, kernel.org kernels won't compile or boot on PPC because Linus' tree doesn't incorporate the latest PPC changes. For PPC specific kernel source and binaries, check here [linuxppc.org]. Right now I'm running 2.4.3 from the bitkeeper tree plus the ReiserFS Endian-safe patch and there haven't been any problems.

  • "And I'll be glad to stop the "non-sense comparison" as soon as Apple drops its nonsense benchmarks in which they claim that a 500 MHz G3 is faster than a 1000 MHz x86."

    And how would you know that it's nonsense?

    By comparing Quake III framerates in MacOS9 (With Rage128 card...) with your Linux or Windows machine (running a GeForce 2 card...)?

    Or comparing Word on both machines?

    I'm no Mac fanatic, but I do know something about CPU architechtures- and more specifically this one. It's derived from IBM's Power series architechture; this is the same overall design that they use on their engineering workstations and their z390 servers.

    Plain and simple- integer performance for the earlier G3 CPU's was on a par with the Pentium II/III machines of the same clock, floating point performance overall was something like 1.5-2 times faster. (This doesn't even begin to cover the G4 architechture- which is even faster.) The reason it seems slower than an equivalent speed x86 CPU is that it's saddled with all that MacOS9 baggage.

    From the sounds of it, for what matters to you, I suspect that the statement is "nonsense"- doesn't make it any less true though.
  • Er, wasn't that a Mandrake-for-PPC I saw last year?

    Frankly while I really like the idea of Mandrake on PPC (again) I'd also like to see them acknowledge that their Sparc & Alpha ports are dead & revise their claims they're going to come out with another release for i486.

    Actually first I'd like them to just go through their download page and remove all the sentences that end with "... from here" where the link has been stripped.

  • >Had to re-build perl from source because I couldn't build a module because of missing headers
    Huh? Did you install perl-devel? When I first started using Mandrake it used to frustrate me to no end because 'perl -MCPAN -e shell' would never work. You have to have the perl-devel package and the appropriate kernel headers installed for it to build packages from CPAN.
    >Flaky hardware detection software (call me when HardDrake actually works)
    Ring, ring. I have had nothing but success on many and varied platforms, desktops, laptops, and servers. Are you using esoteric hardware?

  • But the reality is 99% of what I could do with Linux I can also do with Darwin. The exception is that there is web-browsers available for Darwin/Aqua and won't be long before more are available.

    The reality is , the only difference (to me) between using OS-X or Linux as the core of my home unix experience is the Kernel. Everything else I use and need often (bash, wget, lynx, less, wc, gcc, postgres, apache, python (mod_python), php, etc) run on top of OSX quite well without any patches or modifications.

    Another brutal reality, where Linux had some crazy media hype happening in the last year, apple seems to be the new 'media star'. With the new apple stores going up and sales, according to financial earining reports, are exploding. OSX will very shotly have the broadest Unix deployment in the home. It's not a speculation or a steve wet dream, it's real.

    Fortunately the community has proven that they are amazingly responsive when someone elses wanker is bigger than theirs. Maybe linux getting kicked out of the 'spotlight' will spark some modivation and co-operation. IMHO if Linux can't conquer the desktop, it will be doomed as a second rate citizen with software support from 3rd party software houses.


    --------------------
    Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
  • If only Apple used standards like AGP, PCI, IDE, SCSI, USB, IEEE 1394

    Too bad they didn't stick to CHRP. These, yes, are standards, however, and here's the kicker, every peice of hardware used, in some way, needs to have a nonstandard component to run, examples:

    Hard drives need to have an apple hard disk driver installed as the first partition in order to work.

    Video cards (AGP or PCI) need to have different video BIOS' to work on Macs.

    The booting process of the apple ROM is undocumented and nonstandard, which is why Linux cannot boot without MacOS.

    So, what's the point of using "standards" when you're just going to go out of your way to make sure anything that follows the standard doesn't work?

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Furthermore, it cant possibly be to hard to get Mac OS X native applications to run on a Mac linux distro

    This is a big misconception. Just because both Mac OS X and Linux have Unix-like cores, does not mean that it's easy to port Mac OS X GUI apps to Linux. The APIs are completely different. Mac OS X doesn't use X11 nor GNOME/KDE, for example.

    Some people point out up GNUStep as a possible bridge for Cocoa apps to get to other Unix distros, but I'm not sure how well that really works, especially since things have changed since the OpenStep days.

    But Carbon apps (Photoshop, Office, Dreamweaver, IE) are not going to end up on Linux anytime soon.

    - Scott

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
  • The original OS X and 9.1 CDs can get a fair sum, too.

    Just so you know, unless you are planning to ONLY run linux on this machine (and remove MacOS 9 and X from the hard drive) selling the cd's that came with it would be piracy. MacOS9+X currently go for $130 in retail stores. If you ARE going to only run linux, then sell away!

  • Very true. It seems that the same problem infests used Unix machines and networking hardware as well. A specific example is the price of a used, decently appointed Cisco 2501 router. These usually end in the $700 - 1250 range from what I've seen, and for Christ's sake, the damn things are older than dirt. Strom Thurmond probably used one when he was in junior high. ;-) The reason why is all the clueless people trying to get one for CCNx studies (and for what the 2501s sometimes go for, you could get a new 1600R/1700 series router and almost a 261x series router used). Another would be people bidding on Sparc 5's like crazy, paying 5 and 6 hundred american dollars for them, when for the same price or even a hair less they could get a (much better IMHO, even if it is uglier) Ultra 1.


    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
  • I am not sure more entries into the PPC market is a good thing for PPC users. There already are more than enough PPC distros available to make sure that the marketplace is competitive so all new entries does is divide a small marketplace into even smaler segments. There is a big risk that what will happen is that none of the PPC distros are able to be profitable because the market is to small and fragmentet which in turn could hurt the quality of what is available.
  • yeah, harmless as long as you don't telnet in and then su root whilst someone else on the network is running a packet sniffer.

    I wholeheartedly agree with Mandrake's policy of not installing them by default, but having SSH [openssh.com] instead.

    --

  • I've built (on a couple of occasions) a cross-compiler under Mandrake quite easily. It isn't that difficult, really
    It didn't happen to be a GNU/Hurd cross installer, did it? If so, I'd really like to speak with you.

    Well, your fingers weave quick minarets; Speak in secret alphabets;
  • Heh.

    Boy, this post goes a long way in explaining why Jobs & Co. built their latest OS on top of an open-source *nix.

    Sure as hell hope Gates and company don't catch on...

    --

  • * Cannot, no matter how many fscking versions of the gcc source and/or egcs get a cross compiler to build.

    I've built (on a couple of occasions) a cross-compiler under Mandrake quite easily. It isn't that difficult, really.

    Ryan T. Sammartino

  • It didn't happen to be a GNU/Hurd cross installer, did it?

    No, sorry. x86 host, MIPS-like target :)

    Ryan T. Sammartino

  • Re:Distributions: make up your mind (Score:3)

    by Enahs ( 1606 ) on Sunday May 27, 2001 @09:16PM (#194296) Journal
    I'll agree that it's a bit silly for distros to try to be one-size-fits-all, but...

    First off, lets look at other distros. Redhat has a few install options, like workstation, server, etc. But then so does Mandrake. And so do others. Why? Isn't the point of distributions to be their own unique piece of the Linux pie? If all distros have the same sorts of install options, and all distros have many target platforms, and they support all desktop environments, then what's the point? There's no uniqueness.
    Does RH have menu now? And you consider vast differences between distros to be a good thing? Get real.

    I'll admit now that I'm not a GNOME fan. At one point I used Redhat (totally a GNOME-ish distro). One day, I found Mandrake and thought it might just be the KDE-version of Redhat. Boy was I wrong. Configuration is mostly Gtk, and a whole lot of work has been put into Mandrake to keep the menus synced between each Window Manager (and it comes with lots). I'll ask again, why? I haven't used the latest Mandrake, but 7.2 was a mess.
    Erm, I fail to see the problem. At one point, yes, Mandrake was RH + KDE. So in the beginning, they used the RH config tools, which were a hodgepodge of GTK and TK. Now? GTK. And really, I'm happy to see that Mandrake isn't solely KDE-centric. They use the Debian-born menu system now, which can keep menus in sync between different windowmanagers/desktop environments. Can you explain why that's a bad thing?

    Oh, and where did you get your copy of 7.2? If it says Macmillan anywhere on the box (if you got a box) you've got a beta release. 8.0 final and beyond are pretty nice, IMHO.

    I later messed with SuSE. SuSE is a MUCH more focused distribution. Granted, it's KDE-centric, but hey, you GNOME folks have Redhat. For the record, anyone looking for a KDE-centric distro should look at SuSE.
    Nice flamebait, BTW. I was actually looking for a desktop-centric, no-fuss distro. I found Mandrake. And yes, I could grab source tarballs and build my own system from scratch if I wanted to, which I don't. I don't want to spend my time off from work futzing with building libs and apps and diagnosing incompatibilities. I want a mostly-working system, which I've found. :-)

    Maybe the distributions need a wide audience so they can guarantee more sales? Really, these desktop-distributions should not be targetting the server market, but they all do. This is nuts. Pick a goal guys.
    I'm so torn on this one. On the one hand, it'd be nice to see distributions settle on one little area. On the other hand, different distributions couldn't be trusted to settle on conventions between different systems, so web-server-centric distros would have one config methodology, the file-sharing server distro would have another, the print-server distro yet another setup, the desktop distro yet another...

    So now Mandrake will operate on PPC as well. Gee, another distro on the road to being the "ultimate distro". The trouble is that I don't think anyone wants an ultimate distro (I sure don't) that does everything to some extent, but nothing to the full extent.

    Which is why I use Slackware. It does its job well.

    Hm. A few points:

    You say it does the job well, but fail to tell us what job it does well (for you). Since you're sure to be using it for the one area it excels at, what is it?

    Last time I checked, Slack was not just x86, but also Alpha and Sparc. So it's not okay for Mandrake to be on more than one platform, but it is for your favorite distro, eh? Interesting. And why advocate one distro above all others when you don't want an "ultimate distro"?

    Come to think of it...nice troll. :-)

  • Mandrake for Alpha (Score:3)

    by NED260 ( 14091 ) <(un.kjie) (ta) (nafets)> on Sunday May 27, 2001 @08:49PM (#194297) Homepage
    We're also working on the alpha port. Take a look at this page [alphalinux.org]. E-mailing sympa@linux-mandrake.com with "SUB cooker-axp" in the body will start you on the road to beta-testerhood.)...

  • Re:well put... (Score:3)

    by hub ( 78021 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @04:41AM (#194298) Homepage
    But the reality is 99% of what I could do with Linux I can also do with Darwin. The exception is that there is web-browsers available for Darwin/Aqua and won't be long before more are available.
    There are more web browsers for Linux PPC than for MacOS X: Netscape, Mozilla, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx, Links, w3m.
    The reality is , the only difference (to me) between using OS-X or Linux as the core of my home unix experience is the Kernel. Everything else I use and need often (bash, wget, lynx, less, wc, gcc, postgres, apache, python (mod_python), php, etc) run on top of OSX quite well without any patches or modifications.
    Another difference between MacOS X and Linux is that Linux does not make your machine slow. Actually Linux PPC is FASTER than MacOS X.

    I'm not trolling, I use both everyday, and I like them both, but not for the same reasons.

  • Come to think of it...nice troll. :-)

    Heh, I guess I came off not so well. I actually wanted to see some insightful discussion on the one-size-fits-all topic.

    ...you consider vast differences between distros to be a good thing?

    Focus is a good thing. If a distro has several audiences in mind then it can be difficult to excel. Witness the Mandrake forum.

    They use the Debian-born menu system now, which can keep menus in sync between different windowmanagers/desktop environments. Can you explain why that's a bad thing?

    It sounds like a good thing, but it seems like unnecessary work on the distro's part. If there is some standard application that takes care of this (the "Debian-born" menu system you mention?), it might be a different story.

    Oh, and where did you get your copy of 7.2?

    From Mandrake's site.

    Nice flamebait, BTW. I was actually looking for a desktop-centric, no-fuss distro. I found Mandrake. [...] I want a mostly-working system, which I've found.

    I was merely pointing out that SuSE is KDE-centric like Redhat is GNOME-centric. I think many (like I was) may still be confused into thinking that Mandrake is KDE-centric. For those that only use KDE (and no other WM) this is good information to know.

    I'm so torn on this one. On the one hand, it'd be nice to see distributions settle on one little area. On the other hand, different distributions couldn't be trusted to settle on conventions between different systems, so web-server-centric distros would have one config methodology, the file-sharing server distro would have another, the print-server distro yet another setup, the desktop distro yet another...

    I think you went a little overboard there. There could be various server distros, like a "office / home / LAN" server vs a "production web" server. Agreeing on a standard configuration may not be a bad idea..

    You say it does the job well, but fail to tell us what job it does well (for you). Since you're sure to be using it for the one area it excels at, what is it?

    It succeeds at being minimalist. It has a lot of packages, mainly for convenience, but they are not all necessary. It doesn't get in your way, and there is no configuration system to wrestle with (simply because there is no configuration system). This is nice, but not in all cases. My desktop runs Slackware, but my laptop runs SuSE.

    Last time I checked, Slack was not just x86, but also Alpha and Sparc. So it's not okay for Mandrake to be on more than one platform, but it is for your favorite distro, eh?

    Mandrake has a history of trying to please everybody, so this adds yet another item to their list of things to support. As far as I can tell, Slackware is pretty much done. They needed something to do :-)

    why advocate one distro above all others when you don't want an "ultimate distro"?

    Actually I was advocating Slack as a focused distro, not an "ultimate distro". It doesn't try to be one-size-fits-all. Those who like Slack's direction will be the most happy with it, but definitely not every Linux user.
  • I've installed a few distributions in my time, and one thing that really bugs me is when they try to do too much. Mandrake stands out as the distro that just tries to do way to much.

    First off, lets look at other distros. Redhat has a few install options, like workstation, server, etc. But then so does Mandrake. And so do others. Why? Isn't the point of distributions to be their own unique piece of the Linux pie? If all distros have the same sorts of install options, and all distros have many target platforms, and they support all desktop environments, then what's the point? There's no uniqueness.

    I'll admit now that I'm not a GNOME fan. At one point I used Redhat (totally a GNOME-ish distro). One day, I found Mandrake and thought it might just be the KDE-version of Redhat. Boy was I wrong. Configuration is mostly Gtk, and a whole lot of work has been put into Mandrake to keep the menus synced between each Window Manager (and it comes with lots). I'll ask again, why? I haven't used the latest Mandrake, but 7.2 was a mess.

    I later messed with SuSE. SuSE is a MUCH more focused distribution. Granted, it's KDE-centric, but hey, you GNOME folks have Redhat. For the record, anyone looking for a KDE-centric distro should look at SuSE.

    Maybe the distributions need a wide audience so they can guarantee more sales? Really, these desktop-distributions should not be targetting the server market, but they all do. This is nuts. Pick a goal guys.

    So now Mandrake will operate on PPC as well. Gee, another distro on the road to being the "ultimate distro". The trouble is that I don't think anyone wants an ultimate distro (I sure don't) that does everything to some extent, but nothing to the full extent.

    Which is why I use Slackware. It does its job well.

  • Re:Used MACs are expensive!! (Score:4)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Sunday May 27, 2001 @09:30PM (#194301) Homepage Journal
    Lots of stuff on eBay is more expensive than it seems that it should be.

    Part of the problem is that the buyers are pitted against each other. A particular type of item, say a 2 Gig hard drive, will get bid up to 25, 30 , even 35 dollars (US), and then those who didn't "win" the auction rush off to bid up the next 2 Gig drive, and then the next one, and the next one, and new would-be buyers get added to the mob as time passes.

    Compare this to the retail environment where Staples and Circuit City and Office Depot and Best Buys and so forth keep offering larger and larger drives at around the $100 price point and the store across the street doesn't wait for the first store to sell out their stock before offering a similar product but offers it at the same time for a few dollars less or with a bigger rebate, or offers the next size up for the same price. They compete for the buyers. In an auction, the buyers compete with each other for the "privilege" of purchasing a particular item, even though there are a dozen or more just like it in auctions ending within 24 hours of each other.

    Also, older hardware is competed for by people trying to upgrade older systems. Socket 7 233MHz Pentiums go for the same as or more than Slot 1 233MHz Pentium IIs, Intel Overdrive and Evergreen upgrade packages for Socket 3 486 machines go for prices for which you can buy a Socket 7 motherboard *and* faster Pentium. Hard drives that fit under the 2.3 Gig or 8.4 Gig limits go for more than they should considering what 15, 20, 30, and 40 Gig drives sell for these days. If you want a 10 Gig drive cheap, you get trampled by people who don't know that they could buy a new (as in faster and with a warranty) drive for not much more than what they'll wind up spending and just use as much of it as their system can see for the time being until they upgrade to a new motherboard and/or OS that'll let them use all of it.

  • 1. Someone, please someone, make an installer that works? I've tried all of them for PPC; there was a LinuxPPC installer (IIRC) that was broken, the FORTH code for the 'blessed' system partition was just wrong. SuSE is on my PPC machines right now because it needed the least work (for me, anyway) to get it running fast.
    2. Let's also see some "no MacOS, no way" things happening. I don't want MOL, I don't want to keep System around. I've never had much luck with the "official" method (the 800k Apple_Bootstrap parition trick) for having a MacOS-less PPC box. I have always used Mandrake on x86, and I hope they'll get this one right.
    3. Voodoo 3! I have a Mac-ized Voodoo3 gathering dust because none of the kernels seem to work, even the latest 2.4.x. Please, there are people with PPC boxes that aren't running ATI. Let's see some cool stuff happen!

  • Why do we care? (Score:4)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Sunday May 27, 2001 @09:27PM (#194303) Journal
    As a PowerPC owner, why should I care? There are already a bunch of PPC Linux distros (which I've tried and wasn't hugely impressed with), and then there's Mac OS X. OS X has most of the cool stuff you can get out of a *NIX box, plus a really nice GUI.

    I'd much rather see the effort go into making some of the existing PPC distros actually work. Too many things are broken after install, and it shouldn't be that way. I don't think I've ever seen a PPC linux install that didn't have at least two broken out of networking, sound, and X. You'd think that, given the relatively much smaller range of PPC hardware, making things work out of the box wouldn't be too hard.

    I know the old battle cry of the open source zealot, "choice is always a good thing," but when my options are 'choice' or 'quality', I'll take quality. I think the open source world sometimes tends to do too much dividing and not enough conquering. All too often, new projects and distros are born out of internal conflicts between developers or other political reasons, rather than genuine technical necessity. In the infamous words of Rodney King,
    Why can't we all just get along?
    Maybe I'm being too hard on Mandrake--maybe they'll be the first to make a Linux distro for PPC that doesn't suck and actually works out of the box. Maybe Linus will stop putting out release kernels (not dev) that don't even compile on PPC. Maybe RMS will go work for Microsoft.

    This is starting to sound like a troll. It's not. It's more of a bitter rant. I'm bitter that PPC linux has always been a second-class citizen to x86 Linux (despite claims of being a cross-platform OS). I'm bitter that people's efforts on the PPC side seem to be divided for petty reasons, rather than working together to produce one decent distro. I'm bitter that the PPC developers and Linus have such a poor relationship. I'm bitter the open source world can't do much better than imitate Windows when it comes to GUI design (and don't talk to me about skins or custom themes in Gnome or KDE--if you think those are what makes a GUI great, you have much to learn).

    This is going to get me some angry KDE or Gnome zealots, for sure. People are going to accuse me of being wowed by the eye candy in OS X while being critical of KDE/Gnome for the same. For starters, OS X has better eye candy :-) but that's mostly irrelevant. What really is important is the system-wide consistency of the GUI on the Mac OS (and I'm talking mainly OS 9, since I haven't used X too much). Once you learn a few apps, you pretty much know where everything will be in every app. The same is not true of *nix. Hell, even emacs and xemacs have significantly different menu structures (at least the keyboard shortcuts are the same). Everybody has their own ideas on what's right, and they insist on doing it that way. Sometimes being consistent is more important than being right, at least with GUI design.

  • Used G3 price? May as well buy new (Score:4)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Sunday May 27, 2001 @08:08PM (#194304) Homepage
    Used PowerMacs (at least anything less than 3 years old) are horribly expensive. May as well buy a new Cube or iBook. Then you can at least swtich-hit and work with Linux, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9.1.

    If you're pricing one from the Apple Store, be sure to check out their refurbished models, they often have some really good deals that're only around for a day or two. Keep in mind that you can use any cheap USB keyboard, so you may consider selling the stock keyboard and mouse on eBay for about $90 for the pair. The original OS X and 9.1 CDs can get a fair sum, too. Probably want to keep the (very cool) diagnostics CD.

  • Re:They already do (Score:4)

    by table and chair ( 168765 ) on Monday May 28, 2001 @10:20AM (#194305)
    "It's called 'information research' - look it up!"

    It's called 'satire' - look it up!



  • Utilites like "telnet" and "finger" are not even included in Mandrake anymore? And yes, I did the "expert" install and selected everything.

    umm...no, you didn't select everything. finger and telnet are most definitely still included in mandrake 8...i'm telnetted into 3 different boxes here at work right now from my manrake 8 machine. the v8.0 packages you want are:

    telnet-0.17-7mdk.i586.rpm
    telnet-server-0.17-7mdk.i586.rpm
    finger-0.17-3mdk.i586.rpm
    finger-server-0.17-3mdk.i586.rpm

  • I, like some of the other posters here, am an OS X user - in fact, when I heard about OS X Public Beta, despite being a poor university student, I was so excited that I specifically went on eBay and bought myself an older iMac, just to play around with it. The GUI is gorgeous, and I instantly fell in love. Wanna know why?

    I used to be a frothing at the mouth Linux advocate. I ran Linux exclusively (Mandrake 7.2, as a matter of fact - which I found to be an excellent distro) on my PC, and swore by it. However, after a year of running Linux, I constantly felt that I was always waging some kind of war against my computer. There was always sys admin to be done. And worst of all, so much time was spent configuring, and not enough being productive. For instance, say one day I want to change the theme of my entire desktop (and I'm running KDE, let's say). So I select a KDE/Qt theme, and all is well. But wait - I'm also running a few GNOME/GTK+ apps. This means that I've got to find a decent GTK+ theme, and find a way to change it - and the only ways I know of doing this are to edit .gtkrc, try to figure out the name of the GNOME configuration control tool, or load GNOME, which I don't particularly want to do. And then there's Netscape, and emacs, and xterm, which means editing .Xdefaults over and over and over (and over) again, until I find a color scheme that is acceptable.

    Anyways... I got sick of always battling my computer. I just wanted something that worked. Mac OS X works. You know what? I loved the Public Beta so much that I ran out and bought a new iMac the day that the final version was released. I installed it, and you know what? There was no fighting with sound, USB, etc... settings. Everything just worked. The OS X GUI is absolutely gorgeous. And after having installed XFree86 and XonX, With a couple keystrokes, I can switch my screen to an X server and run all my old, familiar Linux apps.

    Despite the fact that I absolutely loathe Microsoft operating systems, I must say that IE is the best web browser I've ever used, and Office is an excellent office suite. Guess what? Now that I run OS X, I can run both of them.

    Anyways... my biggest beef with Linux and *BSD is that the USB support is still not up to par. Due to the fact that I have a P3 and an iMac, and I switch between them frequently, I bought an excellent mac USB keyboard, a MS IntelliTrackBallthingy, and a USB hub. Thus, by flicking the switch on my hub, I can have the mouse and the keyboard active on whatever workstation strikes my fancy, right?

    Well, partially right... Certainly, if I'm running Windows, BeOS, QNX, or Solaris, then everything runs well, but if I'm running Linux or *BSD, it ain't gonna happen. On Linux, if I'm in an XFree86 session and I switch the USB switchbox to my mac and then back again, my trackball refuses to function. If I CTRL-ALT-F1 to console mode, then switch, then switch back, and CTRL-ALT-F7 to X mode, then about 75% of the time everything works as expected. The other 25% of the time, neither my mouse nor my keyboard is detected (at which point, they are never detected again). This means pressing the reset button and waiting for fscks. I wish that I could run FreeBSD on my P3, but BSD is even worse in this arena.

    A friend of mine put it well... (not to get flamed - this is the way I feel) - he said that Linux has the feeling of a big shareware project that never gets finished.

    So in conclusion... when I have a breathtakingly gorgeous OS that has the ability to run all the Linux apps (with the installation of an X server), and can run all the mainstream apps (such as MS, Adobe, etc... products), why would I even consider switching to Mandrake on my G3?

  • That's right!!! (Score:5)

    by table and chair ( 168765 ) on Sunday May 27, 2001 @10:17PM (#194308)


    If only Apple used standards like AGP, PCI, IDE, SCSI, USB, IEEE 1394... then we might be able to get somewhere with those crazy undocumented [apple.com] machines of theirs.

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