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: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:
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