Posted on 08/23/2005 7:19:48 PM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
When Apple Computer announced in June that it planned to move to Intel chips, one of the companies left in the lurch was Terra Soft Solutions.
The small Colorado company had carved out a nice niche specializing in selling Linux for Macs and other machines that use IBM's PowerPC chips. In the days following Apple's bombshell, Terra Soft quickly announced plans to seek out alternative hardware on which its Yellow Dog Linux could run.
This week, Terra Soft is announcing it has filled some of the void created by Apple's move. Under a new deal, Terra Soft will resell PowerPC-based servers from Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury's XR9 systems use the same G5 chip as Apple's Xserve, but at 2.4GHz, the chips are slightly faster than those used in Apple's top-of-the-line servers.
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Interesting comment.
Any mac zealots here who are more willing to give up the OS than the hardware?
No, that's okay. OS X is better than Linux, currently.
Possibly appropriate for the Mac pinglist.
PING
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Yeah! but Twice???!!!
Only clicked once, got two... FR is running a twofer tonight?
What advantage does it have for FR?
I was using Netscape but it became a little unstable and I understand they are not upgrading for the Mac?
If I wanted to use Unix, it would be Mac OS X, not Linux. And I don't.
It's going to be a long time before Apple completely stops supporting PPC-based machines. When they shifted from 68k-series chips to the PowerPC, it was a number of years before the old 68k Macs were totally left behind.
I'd guesstimate it will be 2009 or 2010 at he earliest before Apple completely drops all PPC support, especially since it'll probably be mid-2007 at the earliest before all new Macs will have Intel CPUs.
As a point of comparison, the first iMacs were introduced in 1998. You can, if you really want to, install OS X Tiger (10.4) on them. (It'll be a little slow, and you'll definitely need an external hard drive and at least 256MB of RAM, but it'll run just fine.) Not bad for a seven-year-old computer.
Depends on your definition of better.
OS10 did a good amout of catching up with the .4 release.
I need to get my dad to post in here.......
By better, I mean usable, intuitive, accessible, and having excellent programs: basically, everything the end user needs. Even Microsoft's OS X offerings are excellent--of course, programs like MSN Messenger and IE have to compete with the likes of Adium and Safari, so that's not much of a surprise.
Linux has a way to go on that front. KDE and Gnome are complete jokes, and Linux itself is kind of a redundancy considering the existence of FreeBSD.
I would say that 10.4 is actually a step ahead, not a catch up. Vista will be a catch up with 10.4. Linux is usually playing "me too" with Windows. I'm just not seeing a better OS out there.
^^^^^^^^^^By better, I mean usable, intuitive, accessible, and having excellent programs^^^^^^^^^^^^
You sound like a non-user, or a user who tried one out a year-or-three ago.
^^^^^^^^^^I'm just not seeing a better OS out there.^^^^^^^^^
You have a right to that opinion.
You sound like a *linux* non-user, or a user who tried one out a year-or-three ago.
(sorry, there wasn't much context in the other post as to what I was saying)
The last time I tried Linux out was about a year ago, yeah. I made the full jump a few years ago with Mandrake (version 8, I think), and had a hard time. The UI was pretty bad, and I couldn't get the drivers for my DSL modem installed--they weren't autodetected, and of course there was no obvious method of untarring the drivers. (Having to resort to the command line means bad, bad things for a graphical OS.)
I suppose I should try Knoppix out, but from what I understand, Linux is slightly behind on its laptop support, and of course I'm typing this from an Inspiron 6000...
Yeah, you're correct about laptop support.
And yes, knoppix is a good try as you don't have to install it and they really keep up on their drivers.... they have to it's a live CD.
After a year.......... you're missing alot. The speed in which OSS software evolves is unprecedented.
Just for the sake of adding a date to the discussion...
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandrake
Mandrake 9 was released in 2002. You're in for a big surprise the next time you try. Fedora Core 5 comes out next february. I recommend giving it a try.
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