[TriLUG] Yaller Dawg...feh!

[Mike Johnson]

Matt Matthews [jvm at linuxgames.com] wrote:
> Well, after my gripes here last week, I've finally gotten Yellow Dog Linux 2.0
> installed on my PowerMac 9500/150.

Hrm.  I'm planning on doing this on a 7500 that I upgraded to a 604/200MHz.

I've done LinuxPPC on 7200's before, so I'm hoping YDL works roughly
the same.
 
> - The trick to getting an older PowerMac running YDL seems to be using the
> BootX MacOS extention to bootstrap a kernel to get to the install CD. I can
> provide details if anyone is really interested. Newer PowerMacs (probably

This doesn't really surprise me.  Your choices are to either use
BootX or attach a serial console to the BIOS and make the changes
there (at least, that's what I remember).

> - My impressions of Linux on x86 vs. ppc: Older x86 hardware is supported very
> well, but the flood of new hardware is difficult to keep up with at times so
> even a new distribution may be lacking compatibility with cutting edge
> consumer hardware. Older ppc hardware is not supported as well because there
> are fewer developers working on it and they concentrate on making sure that
> the limited new hardware coming from Apple is supported, ending up with a
> situation in which new hardware is actually supported fairly well. I'm not
> sure how non-Apple ppc hardware influences this difference between x86 and ppc
> Linux hardware support.

I'm planning on dropping an IDE card in the box so I don't have to go
buy larger SCSI drives.  It -should- work.
 
> It has been an interesting project, but all things considered, I am really
> hoping that I can make MacOS X work on this (unsupported) hardware eventually
> so that I don't have to deal with YDL. On a newer Mac, I might not be so
> disappointed in YDL, but would probably still want MacOS X just for having a
> terminal running tcsh running right next to a movie playing in Quicktime. ;^)

OSX is just -sweet-.  We just bought a G4/733 for my wife.  OS X is really
just slicker than snot.  Imagine having the ability to run a lot of the
apps you can only get on closed source OSes (Quicktime, Office, Diablo II)
with all the open source tools you're used to.  Oh, and iTunes is simply
the best MP3 tool out there.

Then again, I'd imagine it might be a bit on the slow side on a 604/150.

Mike
-- 
Never trust a man who puts anything other than a finger up his nose. - _Snatch_