Other Distros (NOT A FLAMEWAR TOPIC!!)

[Michael M.]

Miles Lane wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Yellowdog -- I used Yellowdog years ago on my Titanium PowerBook G4. 
> I liked it okay, but I gave up on Linux on PowerPC because it was
> always trailing very far behind on driver support and availability of
> bleeding edge packages.  I haven't tried Ubuntu for PPC.  I should
> probably give it a shot.  Still, YaBoot and all that was always a
> pain.  PCs have a little easier to use partitioning.  (I wish someone
> would create an open source equivilent of Symantech's PartitionMagic! 
> PartitionMagic kicks fanny.)
>
> Mandrake for PPC -- Same as Yellowdog.
>
>   
Funny, as I'm writing this I've just finished wiping Ubuntu PPC from my 
iMac and am in the process of reinstalling OS X (I've counted seven 
license agreements so far, and there are more updates to come!).  I have 
left some free space in case I want to try some Linux distro again, but 
in general I think you're right.  PPC Linux is tough, some things are 
lacking, and depending upon your machine it's much likelier that 
something or another just won't work right.  Ubuntu was the best of 
Debian (Sarge and Etch) and Gentoo for me, but my iMac has an nVidia 
card and that's just not fully supported under Linux.  (NVidia, of 
course, won't provide enough information to allow for a fully functional 
open-source driver, and unlike x86/amd64, nVidia doesn't bother with 
it's own non-free drivers for PPC.)  Many people have better results 
than I did, though, and I never tried Yellow Dog.  I wonder what the 
future holds for PPC Linux, given that the platform probably become a 
smaller niche now that Apple has switched to x86.

My new machine, which came with Ubuntu pre-installed, is an AMD 64 
Athlon X2, but for now I'm sticking with an x86 install.  I just don't 
have the energy to try yet another port for awhile.  I need easy!

-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson