Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 11th Nov 2008 22:12 UTC
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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RE: why does this feel bittersweet?
by samad on Wed 12th Nov 2008 06:42
in reply to "why does this feel bittersweet?"
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.
RE[2]: why does this feel bittersweet?
by niemau on Wed 12th Nov 2008 07:05
in reply to "RE: why does this feel bittersweet?"
Member since:2007-06-28
The only market that was left was servers running Linux on PowerPC chips.
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
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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.