David W. Drake wrote: [snip]
Everybody keeps recommending Yellow Dog Linux to me and the YDL website
makes it look like a good OS. It does seem to be a little large and
complex and graphical, particularly for my initial experiments, which I
want to focus on the command line and on the old traditional unix type
programs so I can get a good foundation in how to use that stuff. I
would also like to download the initial installation rather than buy it
on CD, so size matters. I used to use MS-DOS and DR-DOS a lot in the
late eighties and early nineties, so the concept of a command line isn't
entirely foreign to me, but I know very little about unix or linux.
YDL is probably going to offer the largest community to turn to if you need help with something. And, as a vendor, they are probably the one most geared toward your hardware platform. For those two reasons, YDL is a pretty good choice, and is the one I'd recommend to someone new to Unix in general. If you know Debian or Mandrake or something else, then go ahead with that instead, because you're only learning the quirks of installing on "odd" hardware.
For some reason I'm personally attracted to netBSD, probably because it
seems to be more simple and straightforward than Yellow Dog. My
ignorant guess is that netBSD might be as good or better for my initial
learning, but might not be able to do some of the more complex things I
want to do later at all.
I don't know about the install process on PPC (I've only used 68k) but I like NetBSD.
I happened to mention my plans to some people on a Usenet newsgroup not devoted to computing, and someone there thought that it would be very hard to use Yellow Dog without a three button mouse. I see that Kensington markets a four button ADB trackball, but it's very expensive.
So, my first questions are:
Is what I want to do (or some parts of what I want to do) practical at
all, with any BSD or linux installation?
Printing and dialup are certainly attainable. Audio recording might be a little touchy, as it depends on whether the sound card is supported. When you get into minority platforms like Mac hardware, this is to be expected. But the 7300 is an older machine; maybe someone's found a solution by now. My guess is that ripping and burning should be fine. Any BSD or Linux should provide a foundation for the tools to do these.
Is my desire to concentrate at first on the command line and
non-graphical apps evidence of insanity, or is their some other reason
why I just shouldn't do it that way?
Depends on what you want to do/learn. Personally I think learning the command line first is an excellent way to learn how the system actually works, as opposed to which widgets to click. But you might learn differently, and prefer to start with a GUI, adding command line stuff to your repertoire as you feel yourself becoming experienced.
What should I use--netBSD, Yellow Dog, or something else, or should I
start with one thing and later switch to something else?
I've used NetBSD only on mac68k, but really appreciate how "clean" the system is. You don't get lots of "stuff" installed that you don't need. This is helpful on older machines with limited resources. OTOH, working with a minority OS on a minority platform has some downsides...you end up compiling software from source more often. Most (but not all!) of the major packages I could find for Linux on PPC; for BSD might be harder.
Do I really need a three button mouse? If I do, does anyone know where
I can get one (or better, a trackball) cheap? What kinds can I use--is
ADB my only choice?
Three button mouse is helpful if you use a GUI. Before I found an (Mouse Systems) ADB 3 button I used a (Macally) 2 button, and that did 99% of what I wanted anyway. Both were supported under YDL. The Macally 2-button seems a little more common; I think I have 3 around now. If you have a USB card, I imagine a USB mouse would work fine.
Tim
-- Tim & Alethea www.ChristTrek.org
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