Terra Soft Solutions, the company behind Yellow Dog Linux and the PowerStation PowerPC workstation (among other things) has been acquired by Fixstars Corporation from Japan, a company solely focused on the Cell/B.E. broadband engine. The entire product line and staff of Terra Soft Solutions will be maintained in Loveland, Colorado.
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Member since:
2005-07-13
Member since:
2007-06-28
i must say, this is really great news for Terra Soft. ever since apple went x86, it seemed that they were kind of... adrift. still putting out great products, just with less apparent enthusiasm.
yellow dog was the distro that truly convinced me to use linux as my main desktop OS. i realize it was basically just red hat. but, the customizations by terra soft, such as YUP, were amazing when they first came about.
amazingly, when i first tried yellow dog, in 2000, i was able to buy a copy right off the shelf in fry's electronics.
i hope that yellow dog continues into the forseeable future. even though fedora now has a ppc edition available, terra soft's exlusive ppc focus has always been awesome.
Member since:2006-03-31
YDL lost much of its impetus much before Apple's switch to x86 chips--specifically, when it was obvious that OS X 10.1 was quite viable, as most serious Mac users stayed away from 10.0. Power users who wanted a more solid operating system than the ancient architecture that constituted OS 7-9 began to be drawn to PPC Linux. OS X effectively removed the reasons for power users to use Linux; namely, OS X combined the interface of Mac OS and all that it entails without imposing on the power and control a GNU system provides. The only market that was left was servers running Linux on PowerPC chips.
Member since:2007-06-28
that's not actually true! terra soft thrived *because* people wanted an alternative to os x! heck, the sole reason i continued to stick with ppc linux for so long was altivec! which, until the core-series intel chips, remained fairly unparalleled for certain tasks that a desktop user could need. for example, media creation. (and, that's my niche, fyi) i have an all OSS recording studio setup. additionally, i often transcode audio and video. the g4 and g5 series chips did a great job, at the time. i didn't actually leave the ppc linux desktop until january 2008!
so, there was quite a bit of time after os x was introduced that people were still running linux on ppc machines. as a matter of fact, many people started running linux as a leaner alternative to os x. mac os x was pretty sluggish and underwhelming until 10.3, imho.
of course, terra soft shifted focus to servers and HPC after the apple-intel switcheroo. but, they were doing fairly well with the desktop crowd until the final days of PPC macs.
Edited 2008-11-12 07:08 UTC
Member since:
2005-07-06
For years I have thought that Yellowdog was secretly funded by apple (hence the special privilages)
The logic behind this idea was it allowed development of the linux kernal and compatibility with apple hardware without apple having to take the 'plunge' and put their weight behind linux (and therefor suffer the backlash if they choose not to use it)
When they moved to osx, I assumed the experiment had failed
Them being bought finally scuppers my theory, shame, I thought it was a good one! :-p
Member since:2006-01-22
Apple helped found, and provided effort and resources to, the MkLinux project during 1996 - 1998. This was Linux running atop Mach, and for a long while was the only option if you wanted to run Linux on either a NuBus and/or non-OpenFirmware PowerPC Mac.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
As I recall, Apple ceased their involvement for three main reasons:
(1) it was among many projects that Apple ceased producing or being involved with in the years after Jobs' return, as he and his team worked to 'refocus' Apple around its 'core' products,
(2) Apple were then committed to the Rhapsody (later Mac OS X) project, and
(3) Other vendors were beginning to bring their 'real' Linux distributions across to the Mac, through support for the PowerPC architecture.
YellowDog came along some six to eight months later, so while your theory is plausible (Apple have done stranger things), unfortunately, it's probably just a coincidence.
I always thought YellowDog completed Apple quite well - given they targeted areas not really of interest to Apple at the time - and I applauded Apple allowing the kind of relationship they did, which really facilitated YDL on the Macintosh. I've used several versions of YDL and, while some of the earlier ones were forgettable (IMO), the latter ones were very nice. Sadly, I'm not sure we'll see such a relationship with an x86 Linux vendor.
My chief concern with the acquisition, however, is this: Since Apple moved away from the PowerPC platform, progress in the desktop area has almost ground to a halt. Not surprising, but still disappointing. I hope that this acquisition doesn't spell the end of the PowerStation; indeed, I'm hoping it will continue and thrive.
Wait and see.
Edited 2008-11-12 13:11 UTC
Member since:
2008-03-27
