I finally dont need Yellowdog anymore!

[J_Sine]

This isn't a knock on Yellowdog or a rant. It's more of a testament to my complete satisfaction with the
world of PPC Linux I've found in Ubuntu! I'll be the first to admit that I almost wasn't even willing to give
Ubuntu a chance as I had discovered that it was a Gnome-centric disto. I've been a KDE user/fan since
I was first introduced to Linux a few years ago. And because of this, Yellowdog was my distro of choice
in the PPC realm. I had heard about Gentoo, Slackware and Debian all supposedly having PPC distros,
but as a new user at the time, Yellowdog seemed to be the most newb-friendly. So I've gone through a few
of the major upgrades to Yellowdog on various PPC hardware that I've had until the last year or so.
My 12" Powerbook just never seemed to want to cooperate with old Yellow, especially when it came to sound
and the Airport Extreme issues, and I cant stand YUM. I had high hopes those things would be fixed when I went to 4.0, but alas,
I still had no sound, there's still no Extreme suppport for Linux yet, and even worse, I never could get the
Linux Wlan-ng drivers to work under Yellowdog. To be honest though, the Wlan-ng issue was an
install/configuration issue on my end, not Yellowdog's fault.
So I had given up on PPC the thought of portable PPC Linux and decided to stick with the stationary x86
kind. That is until I gave Ubuntu a second try after reading on these forums that Wlan-ng was pretty much
operational out of the box, Ubuntu used Synaptic and KDE was an installable set of package (I fell in love
with the ease of Synaptic after using Yoper on x86 as my main desktop distro). I've found that so far,
everything works perfectly with Ubuntu without having to perform any strange animal sacrifices to the
Linux gods to get it to work! My sound, DLink DWL-122 and KDE all perform flawlessly with Ubuntu.
So I just want to give a huge Kudos to the Ubuntu developers for not forgetting that we PPC users
need and want Linux too. =D>

[franx]

Similar feelings here, J_Sine.

I cut my teeth on m68k Linux for my decade-old Quadra 630 Mac; then successfully went over to Yellow Dog 3.01 for my iMac G3/350 after unhappy experiences with Gentoo and Mandrake. I even taught myself how to build and install the wlan-ng driver on the old 2.4 kernel.

BUT. While waiting for YDL 4, I discovered Ubuntu, and found it to be phenomenally light and easy to use; these forums also finally helped me to get 3D acceleration going on my old ATI Rage VR card.

When YDL 4 finally arrived, I disinstalled Ubuntu and installed the new YDL. What a time-consuming hassle. I found it to be heavy and slow, and -- weirdly -- I could never get it to recognize my Airport card. Like you, I have no desire to dump on YDL because it served me well. But I'm now back happily in the Ubuntu orbit. It's a terrific distro.

[noob]

I too found Ubuntu (via /.) while waiting for the "public release" of Yellow Dog 4. I couldn't be happier. While YDL is a great distro, Ubuntu is simply much better in my opinion.

[eggie]

Agreed . Great dist-but no support for airport extreme sortof makes a mockery of the word portable. No nvid drivers makes using my tower just awful. Still , will be great in the future 6mth release cycle is quick.

[chascon]

"eggie Agreed . Great dist-but no support for airport extreme sortof makes a mockery of the word portable. No nvid drivers makes using my tower just awful. Still , will be great in the future 6mth release cycle is quick."

Although I don't like ydl myself, what are you talking about Eggie? You make it sound as if "airport extreme" is supported in ubuntu-ppc. No linux-ppc distro supports airport extreme because idiotic broadcom will not release specs. And for those that say they do not do it because of military frequencies, bull!

As for nvidia drivers, nvidia does not release ppc binaries, nor are they co-operative enough to release specs that support 3D functions upon which to create open source 3D drivers.

These probems are not distro specific but are linux-ppc problems in general.

eggie, I can see this tower you speak about is not a mac tower.

Personally, I have a great distaste for ydl and their business practices but it is not for the above mentioned.

[DirtDawg]

Yes , yes, and YES! I too have an old imac g3 and, being a noob, I've tried several Yellow Dawg releases and Mandrake 9.1 and 10.1. I finally stuck with Mandrake 9.1 because it seemed to work "best", though there was no working sound and the clock was never right (leading me to believe the PRAM battery was dead).
I finally tried Ubuntu pretty much just because I ahd nothing better to do and it has been WONDERFUL! To boot, my clock works fine now, so apparently it wasn't the battery at all.
Hooray for Ubuntu! =D>

[DJ_Max]

Yes , yes, and YES! I too have an old imac g3 and, being a noob, I've tried several Yellow Dawg releases and Mandrake 9.1 and 10.1. I finally stuck with Mandrake 9.1 because it seemed to work "best", though there was no working sound and the clock was never right (leading me to believe the PRAM battery was dead).
I finally tried Ubuntu pretty much just because I ahd nothing better to do and it has been WONDERFUL! To boot, my clock works fine now, so apparently it wasn't the battery at all.
Hooray for Ubuntu! =D>
I'm with you, the only distro I could get to work on my iMac was Mandrake. MDK9.1 worked the best, but was extremely out of date with software. MDK10.1 stuff just didn't worked. I've used YellowDog, but it didn't work much, and 4.0 could never install. I had Gentoo installed, but couldn't get Xorg setup(probably due to my hardware). Then at last desperation, I downloaded Ubuntu due to what the word stood for, and the fact that it was based on Debain. So far the install & post-install as been flawless. By far the best ever. Now I'm about to install some developement tools. =D>

[adamw]

Definitely! Yellow Dog 3 was a nightmare - I probably installed it 20 times before it finally made it all the way through the install, and with just the exact software configuration - somewhere near "minimal". Yellow Dog 4 was even worse, and I happened upon Ubuntu while searching for a good distro that would work on Virtual PC. I was blown away when I installed it on my PowerBook. I haven't been this excited since the Mac OS X 10.2.0 release.

[DirtDawg]

It's good to hear other Maccers with similar experiences. I couldn't even get Yellow Dawg 3 or 4 to initiate the GUI installer (Anaconda, I think it's called?). In fact, I used release 2 most often as a convenient way to completly erase my Hard drive partitions so I could install Mandrake (Mandrake 9's "erase partition" doohicky never worked. So I would install Yellow Dawg just long enough to erase the HD, then manually eject the disk, reboot, and make another attempt installing Mandrake. Certaintly not the correct way to do things, but I get points for resourcefullness O:) ).
Ubuntu has been awsome and I'm with you, it's really FUN to work on. I often find myself dinking around on Ubuntu just because I'm excited about it (wot a nerd ;-) ).

[kadymae]

Y'know, despite the fact that YDL is supposed to be *the* PPC distro, YDL 3.x pissed me off so much that I scrubbed it off my old iMac.

I've not yet tried YDL 4.x (and have no plans to, actually), but so far I've been very impressed with the "slickness" of Ubuntu on my Pismo, and PPC Linux really isn't Ubuntu's bread and butter.

YDL and KDE really seemed just painfully "cobbled" together, but the Ubuntu +Gnome setup is, in some places, as well crafted as OSX.

[kadymae]

I couldn't even get Yellow Dawg 3 or 4 to initiate the GUI installer (Anaconda, I think it's called?)

And here's the thing about how bassackwards Terrasoft is.

That GUI installer has been pretty much broken since day ONE. (It works on a teensy fraction of Macs.)

Yet ...

1) Terrasoft still hasn't fixed it ... and it's been about 3 years now?
2) The bulk of their printed and on-line instructions is about how to use the GUI they know won't work for 99.9 % of the people.
3) The text based installer they have (at least in 3.x) is not all that easy to use.

How very, very different from the Ubuntu approach. The installer (while not pretty) is fairly straightforward and it. just. frelling. works.

[DirtDawg]

And here's the thing about how bassackwards Terrasoft is.

That GUI installer has been pretty much broken since day ONE. (It works on a teensy fraction of Macs.)

How very, very different from the Ubuntu approach. The installer (while not pretty) is fairly straightforward and it. just. frelling. works.

Happy to hear it wasn't my ineptitude causing the non-working GUI. One thing's for sure: the Ubuntu install was the smoothest thing I've ever seen outside of a mirror.

Funny thing is, the GUI install worked when installing YD 2.x, but never any releases after that. I suppose they had to "break" it somehow. Well, I'm happy Yellow Dawg and Mandrake both didn't work 'cause now I found Ubuntu.

(On that note, however, developers for both those distros deserve a tip o' the hat for fighting the good fight. Thanks to all!! )

[eve55]

I downloaded Hoary PPC LIVE yesterday. Took my old Pismo out of the closet and installed it. For the very first time ever in linuxland EVERYTHING was working "out of the box", wireless lan included. I am 1000% pleased with UBUNTU. it gave my Pismo a new life. I am going to install UBUNTU on my PC desktop and laptop as well, as Hoary i386 LIVE also worked perfectly at the first try. UBUNTU rocks !!!

[WayneLeutwyler]

I dont know if this is off topic, but I have a question. I have a B&W Mac G3, when I installed YDL 4 on it all I needed to do was put the CD in boot, and then follow the prompts for the install. I have no Mac OS of any kind on the system.

Will my install of Ubuntu on this G3 be as simple as YDL 4 was? I have Ubuntu on a couple of my PC's and now I realy want to see it on my old G3. I see people talk about old world macs, and I am not to sure if my G3 falls into that group.

Thanks,

Wayne

[maba]

Bought myself a G3 Blue and White and wiped the existing OS 9.1 off. I installed YLD after that but found it somewhat annoying considering the sound-problems and overall lack of performance.

THANK YOU UBUNTU, sound rocks, even my exotic wireless keyboard and mouse worked straight away ... impressive !!!

[Viro]

I dont know if this is off topic, but I have a question. I have a B&W Mac G3, when I installed YDL 4 on it all I needed to do was put the CD in boot, and then follow the prompts for the install. I have no Mac OS of any kind on the system.

Will my install of Ubuntu on this G3 be as simple as YDL 4 was? I have Ubuntu on a couple of my PC's and now I realy want to see it on my old G3. I see people talk about old world macs, and I am not to sure if my G3 falls into that group.

Thanks,

Wayne
I think these qualify as new world, but then I'm quite new to the world of Macs myself. If they are new world, Ubuntu installation should be similar to the x86 install.

[bennogc]

Yep the G3 B&W definately are so called "NewWorld"...

Anyway, I just installed Ubuntu on my 3Generation TiBook and it worked just fine :D
I had previously YDL3 & Debian Sarge installed and while YDL3 configured my Airport-Card just fine, it had BIG troubles with the grafics and felt SO slow. Debian Sarge on the other hand had no problems with the grafics, but I just could not get the Airport to work...

Thanks Ubuntu =D>

[CreeVal]

Though i havent been using Linux as long as you guys apperantly have i do feel the need to say that Ubuntu is one of the best distro's ive tried...
I have never tried Yellowdog, but ive tried alot of other ones, last one that i had up and working was SUSE, but after alot of problems with it i decided to try even harder with Ubuntu, and it payed off...

All of the troubles i had with configuring my Radeon 9800 XT in SUSE where uneeded.
It took me 4 days of reading and configuring in SUSE 8-[ , in Ubuntu this procedure took me about 2 hours...
I admit that it might be that i was a bit Windows "addicted" and was unsure on how to proceed with a driver install, but i can honestly say that Ubuntu is one of the easiest distro's i have ever used... =D>

And of course that the Ubuntu community is one of the more friendlier type helps alot of newbies get going with this distro...
So to the Ubuntu team: THANK YOU!!! :D :D :mrgreen:

[Deacon Nikolai]

I actually am very new to Linux and recently bought Yellow Dog with Support. I actually prefer GNOME from my experimenting and got my Live CD yesterday for free and really really like it! If I want to put ubuntu on my YDL partition is this easy?

[corezion]

Happy to hear it wasn't my ineptitude causing the non-working GUI. One thing's for sure: the Ubuntu install was the smoothest thing I've ever seen outside of a mirror.
Funny thing is, the GUI install worked when installing YD 2.x, but never any releases after that. I suppose they had to "break" it somehow. Well, I'm happy Yellow Dawg and Mandrake both didn't work 'cause now I found Ubuntu.
(On that note, however, developers for both those distros deserve a tip o' the hat for fighting the good fight. Thanks to all!! )
I just wanted to say, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU! As the lead developer of the 2.0 installer... thank you. The small team of developers who slaved for $8-12/hour thank you. We're all still friends. You don't go through that sort of drama and hardship and not bond or break. I designed the installer to be as robust as possible. In fact if it wasn't obvious the entire development team were Debian users trying their best to create a solid RPM based distro. Red Hat was no help since they intentionally don't allow their code to work on PPC. They're in bed with Intel. My friend and old roomate Stephen wrote the first partitioner for the YDL 2.0 installer in 4 hours in Python since pdisk sucked. He's also the yup author. I know he would appreciate any love you can send his way. We're all sort of... well we're still trying to get through this life as best possible. Ups and downs.
Anaconda was really crap. I could go on for hours since this is a topic I've kept inside for about 5 years now. We tried to convince the CEO from the bottom of our hearts that it was in the best interests of the users, developers sanity, and investors that a move to Debian would be perfect. But there was no dice. Seeing that Ubuntu has passed up YDL basically affirms all of the forward looking views we passionately held back then. I've got a soft spot for Power hardware. Thanks to everyone who is using Linux/PPC (not the company that ripped off the name) on their macs! Thanks to everyone who spoke from their hearts about 2.x. The reason 3.x went back to anaconda is because it was such a frustrating environment that all of us who built the installer for 2.x left. Simple as that. No one to maintain the vision.
Best of luck with Ubuntu and the Debian community who's years and years of meticulous untiring unwavering blood sweat and tears have allowed Ubuntu to arise.
peace, metta,
Charlie Stevenson
:cool:

[corezion]

Also thanks to Clausen who logged in to my iBook from Australia and ported his GNU parted to PowerPC and added nice support for hooks into GUIs.

peace,
core

[Deacon Nikolai]

I actually am very new to Linux and recently bought Yellow Dog with Support. I actually prefer GNOME from my experimenting and got my Live CD yesterday for free and really really like it! If I want to put ubuntu on my YDL partition is this easy?
I actually did this and it was quite easy. Ubuntu ≠ Yellow Dog, Ubuntu > YellowDog Linux!