Pete, What a great summary. Thank you for taking the time. TJ -----Original Message----- From: iMac List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Moulton, Pete Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 6:31 PM To: iMac List Subject: Re: Alt OS
Wayde I've used Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 on my iMac and intend to load it on my PPC7200as soon as I've gotten a bigger hard drive. Linux on the Mac tends to have better hardware support than for the PC world. Oh and Yellow Dog is based on the industry standard Red Hat Linux, but designed to run on Motorola processors. I do know others who swear by it and even run it on G4's in preference to Panther. This may be my subjective opinion, but Yellow Dog ran faster than Panther on the same said G4. This is probably true since Linux is actually only a cut down Unix kernel, all the other paraphenalia that comes with Linux is Open Source stuff, and not part of Linux per se. There are some great advantages to running Linux on a Mac, especially if you have a slower machine that cannot run Mac OS X like the 601, 603 and 604 based PowerPCs that appeared before the G3. Linux can give a new lease of life to old hardware. I never had any crashes with Linux on my iMac but had OS 9.0 crash about 4 times over the same year period (still better than Jokedows 98 - stopped counting after 40 crashes, At Work Jokedows XP has crashed 37 times in the last 6 months). The main downside to Linux is the lack of apps, especially in the music/recording/sequencing arena. Generally some Linux distros are on the 'bleeding edge' as they use all the latest releases and bundle them together without necessarily performing full and proper tests to ensure they are compatable. You will come aross the odd few apps that crash or just won't work. Not so with Mac OS X. Yellow Dog Linux is one of the better Linux vendors focusing on stability and compatability. When someone writes a Linux driver for some new hardware, the emphasis is on getting it working and not security, so there is a potential vulnerability, however in practice it is very stable and very secure. Contrast this with OpenBSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD philosophy where security is more prominent in the developer's mind. If a potenital or real security vulnerability like say a 'buffer overrun' is discovered in BSD, the developers trawl through ALL the whole code investigating every place where a Buffer is used, whereas Microsoft generally only fix that particular buffer that is affected by the vunerability. Most Linux software is free, so if cost is a factor then certainly consider getting Yellow Dog Linux (half the price of Panther), OpenOffice as your office suit (fully compatable with MS Office) at around $10. You can set the Linux desktop to resemble Mac OS, Unix or Windows too, plus you can use different window managers like KDE, GNOME, etc, whereas so far you can only use the Finder window in Mac OS X. In the PC world, where I work there are 250 PCs running Jokedows XP and MS Office, costing of around $1000 per machine. We could purchase a single Linux or BSD Unix CD for about $20 and OpenOffice 1.1 for $10 and install that on every machine here, all for $30!!! BSD is rock solid. The last I heard was they only had one breach in the last 7 years! Personally I intend to use Panther on my iMac and G4, and install Yellow Dog Linux on my PPC7200 unless anyone wants to take it off me along with an External SCSI ZIP drive and 2500 Printer for AUS$145? Best Regards Pete "To mess up a Mac OS X box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it." (Stolen from Charles Martin) -----Original Message----- From: iMac List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kim Gammelgaard Sent: Friday, 11 June 2004 7:19 AM To: iMac List Subject: Re: Alt OS My experiences with other OS's on iMacs won't count here, but I would seriously advise you to upgrade to 10.3.4 as soon as possible, as it will give your machine a significant speed boost and a lot of great features and bug fixes and a large number of small enhancements here and there. That said, it is of course an older machine, and yes, I have succesfully installed 10.3 on one 333 MHz , and can vouch for that it works well if you have sufficient RAM, just like 10.1.5 of course. I would probably get a bigger drive too, if I were you, if a newer computer isn't in sight. Cheers, Kim On 10/06/04 16:19, "Wayde Gutman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is anyone on this list using alternative OS ? I know, heresy, but I > came from the PC Linux community, crossed over to Mac (using a iMac > Rev. D with OS X 10.1.5) and wondered. Has anyone with a similar > machine to mine running OS X 10.3 ? Darwin/BSD 5.5 has a more > completed package with version 10.3. > > -Wayde Gutman -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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