I'd stick with Debian [LWN.net]

I'd stick with Debian

Posted Jun 7, 2005 6:45 UTC (Tue) by davidw (subscriber, #947)
In reply to: Yellow Dog Linux sticks with PowerPC by chbarts
Parent article: Yellow Dog Linux sticks with PowerPC

Debian runs on x86, PPC, and a bunch of other stuff. For that matter, Ubuntu exists for x86 and PPC... I've never really understood the appeal of a one-off distribution that's limited to one architecture. All my Debian installations are virtually the same, modulo a few boot loader and kernel details. That means that I know exactly how things work, where they are, and so on, without having to deal with different distributions for different hardware.

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I'd stick with Debian

Posted Jun 7, 2005 8:29 UTC (Tue) by micampe (guest, #4384) [Link]

Debian runs on x86, PPC, and a bunch of other stuff. For that matter, Ubuntu exists for x86 and PPC... I've never really understood the appeal of a one-off distribution that's limited to one architecture.

Same for Red Hat and Fedora, on which YDL is and has always been based, so the appeal is the same for you and for people that don't know Debian. You can s/Debian/Fedora/g in your whole post and still get something meaningful with the exact same sense.

I'd stick with Debian

Posted Jun 7, 2005 11:46 UTC (Tue) by philips (guest, #937) [Link]

Well, seems readers never really compared YellowDog with other distros. And never tried Apple's hardware.

Beaty (or bogosity) of Apple's hardware in its limited number of configurations. Fedora, Debian, Ununtu all have the inherited hardware configuration mess from ix86. Apple's hardware do not - I repeat do not - need all those mess.

You can easily read model number from OpenFirmware and tell precisely what kind of hardware you have.

YellowDog - just as Mac OS itself - does not need any configuration. I repeat again: does not need any configuration. Because it is static. I think only top of the line PowerMacs do have additional PCI/PCI-X slots and video card is replaceable too. But again: Apple sells only nVidia & ATI. But as much variety goes - that's it.

Compare to e.g. Dell. My company have had shipment of 6 Dells: 3 different hard drives models were found inside (one model had repeatedly failed, so complete shipment was inspected - that's why I know details), two different kinds of motherboards, 3 different kind of Pentium IV fans. The same shipment! My colleage Dell is louder than my loudspeakers - mine is completely quiet. Go figure.

Gosh, Apple is so nicely predictable. Thou slow. But it has this primitive beauty: it just works.

Fedora's support for PPC is something new - I haven't heard about it before. I know that later RHLs (8 & 9) dropped PPC support. Didn't tried Ubuntu. Debian as of 2.2/3.0 shipped outdated XFree which had huge problems recognizing my video card - I have had problems even with frame buffer initialization. Going to try 3.1 soon ;-)))

I'd stick with Debian

Posted Jun 9, 2005 23:06 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link]

"All my Debian installations are virtually the same, modulo a few boot loader and kernel details."

Heh, till you move that berkeley db from one to the other and find your endians out of order...