After a long delay, Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 is now shipping. Yellow Dog is a Fedora-based Linux distribution for PowerPC processors.
After a long delay, Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 is now shipping. Yellow Dog is a Fedora-based Linux distribution for PowerPC processors.
…that we’ll see the freely downloadable ISOs within the next 2 weeks.
I dual-boot OS X and YDL 3.01 on my iMac, but I think I’ll give Ubuntu a shot. I much prefer a Debian-based distro, because I use Debian on my other Linux computers.
Debian based systems are just much easier to administer.
That’s true.
Still eagerly awaiting the next stable release (Sarge) for my server rebuild, but Testing works great on my workstation!
I like ubuntu except that they are far behind on the “little” packages like dev stuff and mutlimedia stuff. you can get those sources but they are unsupported.
up to date UI is great though for a normal user workstation.
I’m a YDL enhanced member and got 4.0 for a couple of weeks now.
There are a few show stoppers: On my old PowerBook G4/400 Titanium, you can only install in text mode and after that you manually have to configure X.
On my 12″ G4/1.33 GHz PowerBook Airport Extreme is still unsupported (i know, it’s Broadcom’s fault, but Terrasoft could at least get them to provide a binary driver for ppc) as is sleep mode on both machines.
Sound works on both machines during setup, but on none afterwards.
Terrasoft still doesn’t ship decent Notebook keymaps, which would be especially important for users with international keyboards.
Terrasoft doesn’t ship a Java VM with it – can’t be too hard, to license IBM’s (which is available as a free downloard) VM, can it?
yum doesn’t work – at least it didn’t work yesterday, though I configured it correctly to use my YDL Enhanced account.
The distribution defaults to KDE, but it somehow seems that it was tailored towards Gnome. Strange.
FWIW, yum does work, but terrasoft’s servers are always busy. I use freshrpms for YDL and FC2, and IIRC, they have a repository for YDL 4.0, though I could be wrong. Also, FWIW, freshrpms has an apt package for YDL that works very well IME, so functionally at least, the task of package management is very debian-like.
Please stick to the topic. Nobody ask to say “I prefer [insert Linux distro]’ on Yellow Dog topic, it becomes tiresome.
So when will we see the freely downloadable images??
both ISO images and/or individual packages
( like kernel, GNOME, KDE, etc.. )
How close is the YellowDogLinux ( YDL ) is
to Fedora Linux ?? It says it’s based on Fedora..
Which Fedora linux ??
What are the differences?
What are differences because of x86 and PowerPC ?
If I were to download src.rpm ( not x86 RPMs ) for fedora,
can I compile and be able to use them under YDL ?
anyone tried ubuntu on a dual 2.5? does it include the fan problem that the very recent kernel patch supposedly fixed?
Actually you can download ppc RPMs at Fedora’s ftp site. And yes, they work with YDL 4.0.
As a paying ydl.net enhanced member, I guess I can expect the ydl.net yum servers not to be too busy for my update request, can’t I?
How come people always talk about stuff that is not related to the topic at hand at all?
I had 3.01 on a 350mhz. g3 powermac, blue n white…it ran great!
Performed so much quicker than osx on this old machine, only problem I had was that I couldn’t install it on the old 15″ ibm monitor I had it hooked up to, the display was horribly garbled as if it was set to a resolution much higher than what the 15″ could handle, so I just used a 17″ monitor for the installation and set it to a lower resolution afterwards, it then worked well on the 15″
blah blah, anyhow
=)
I’d love to hear more experiences from people using 4.0, I’m looking forward to trying it out once it’s on the public servers
There was a posting on an official YDL mailinglist (YDL Announcements) that said the ISOs will be available in roughly two weeks.
I’d love to hear more experiences from people using 4.0, I’m looking forward to trying it out once it’s on the public servers
Thanks for the update on all the things from 3.1 that Terrasoft still hasn’t gotten around to fixing in 4.0
::headdesks::
And, when oh when oh when will Linux distributors figure out that it’s the kind of god is in the details things that you enumerate that are what’s really keeping Linux off the desktop.
And, when oh when oh when will Linux distributors figure out that it’s the kind of god is in the details things that you enumerate that are what’s really keeping Linux off the desktop.
—–
linux distros invest where they get a return. basic principle of business. currently its much better to concentrate on server stuff and move slowly and cautiously on the desktop investments.
YDL is aiming for the desktop market — or at least they were in the 3.1 days.
its very like fc2, but they have set it to default to kde.
I read somewhere (maybe on the fedora site) that Yellowdog contributes a lot to the development of Fedora PPC.
It is of course in their best interest.
I’ve used YDL as my primary PPC OS (PowerBook 667) for more than two years, and eagerly downloaded version 4.0 Final the night it was released (five months late). Unfortunately, this release is riddled with bugs and inadequacies. Services (esp. pbbuttonsd) die arbitrarily, programs I depend on freeze unexpectely, yum — which I eventually got working — drops out 80% of the time due to server overload, and sound does not work. I emailed Terrasoft about the sound issue, since previous released have worked just grand, and their CEO, Kai Schaft, personally responded that sound was not their first priority. Seems they have a lot of work going on with the Defense Department, and with the new 64-bit Apple G5s, and are too busy to spare much thought for the rest of their user base. Despite their buggy release there has been only one updated file in the YDL-enhanced repository. It’s almost as if the release is unimportant to them, and not worth supporting. The YDL lists are active and fiendly but can’t help much given the situation.
After three weeks of painful struggle I gave up. Now Ubuntu PPC graces my PowerBook. It too has some problems, but the Ubuntu experience is a dream compared to the hair-pulling nightmare of YDL 4.0.
YDL: a nice distro for the novices with the upshot that for a while, at least, you can also grab Fedora Core and Mandrake(as well as some other RH based distro RPMs) and build new packages or maybe even find some precompiled for ppc. The downside YDL usually lags so far behind, that it becomes problematic to do this without having to search for archived source or binary RPMs as these other distros move much faster in upgrading support libraries, etc. and hence dependencies. YDL official repos are updated infrequently(seems to be fewer every year, and EXTREMELY low for official 3.x). Contribs have also declined, but they were never very high outside of a few major items, e.g. Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird, etc. Freshrpms: well ppc/YDL is obviously lower priority and the builder has limited access to ppc architecture machines, and IIRC what he has is quite old/slow.
Installation on the other hand is quite simple for basic stuff: ethernet & dialup(hw modem only, soft modem will require a hope and a prayer from what Ive seen on the newsgroups and manual config) will configure correctly out of the box. Sound works for the basic included apps(mostly). X11 is properly(I think) configured for the initial setup options(excepting acceleration). Desktops/etc. configure properly. Downside: never ever did have wireless correctly configured by the installer, as it ALWAYS requires manual editing of config files once tracked down, of course SuSE didn’t work out of the box either with wireless. Sound is problematic once you go beyond the basic included apps, best described as iffy. Installing acceleration for X11 is a challenge for newbies, whom I presume generally don’t bother, but its not that bad, just more manual editing as everything necessary is usually included, but not activated. Rebuilding kernels other than the supplied/pre-base configured is a chore, and seems to be getting worse with 2.6.x.
Ubuntu/Debian: A good alternative for those with somewhat of a clue and no fear of the CLI. It seems to be pretty popular in the ppc world as far as developers go. There should(and seem) to be more binary packages available, and presumably more of the source packages would work out of the box or at least have a more automated method of obtaining more recent requirements. Kernel packages also seem to be updated more often, allowing avoidance of kernel config “hell”(well compared to my experiences with x86 kernel configs) as they will be pre-configured.
All said, I need to get around to ordering burned cds from someone(stuck on dialup for the moment, which makes ISO dling problematic }:), backup my personal stuff, and give a debian base a shot.
Have tried:(linux)
x86: everything from SLS on, well the major ones at least
ppc: YDL 2.3,3.x Mandrake SuSE
Is anyone running netbsd on a powerbook or ibook? how is hw(power management) support in real life? (my main server runs FreeBSD on x86…)
How close is the YellowDogLinux ( YDL ) is
to Fedora Linux ?? It says it’s based on Fedora..
– i’ve yet to use 4.0, but back in the 3.x days, it stayed very close to what rh was on x86. ofcourse, it had some varying packages, and the display was different… but the filesystem was layed out very true to rh.
Which Fedora linux ??
– i believe it’s based on fc2
What are the differences?
– it’s essentially a ppc portage of fc
What are differences because of x86 and PowerPC ?
– “it’s essentially a ppc portage of fc”
If I were to download src.rpm ( not x86 RPMs ) for fedora,
can I compile and be able to use them under YDL ?
– yes, definately. but.. ydl offers pre-compiled binaries for ppc.. as does freshrpms (but they’re not completely up to date with version 4.0). they’re very handy, and i recommend them, instead of src rpms.
oh, and by the way… am i the only one who’s disappointed that 4.0 will no longer support OldWorld macs?
my poor beige g3 will have to remain running 3.1…. forever 🙁
The PPC version of MDK 10.1 (first PPC release since 9.1) is brewing currently, so that may be an alternative if YDL doesn’t work out. http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02022#0 is the link to RC1 for the adventurous.