Convince me that Yellowdog is the Linux for me!

[Kimball Larsen]

Ok - I'm fed up.

I am a programmer who loves linux - but hates it on the ppc.  I have
tried Linux PPC and Mandrake, both of which have driven me nearly up the
wall with all the tweaks and workarounds and plain broken stuff in
them.  I love the Unix in OS X, but hate the speed of it... 

So here's the deal.  I have been looking for the best PPC version of
Linux to install on my powerbook.  Convince me that Yellowdog is the
best one.  

Here are the machine specs:
1999 Apple Powerbook G3 333 (bronze keyboard, codename Lombard)
6 GB HD (internal)
384 MB RAM
External USB Scroller mouse (pretty generic - but it's manufactured by
Interex)
External USB CD Burner (Que! Drive 4X4X8)

I am particularly interested in the following areas:

1)  Sound.  
	Will sound work at all in any of the window managers?  On all the
distros I've tried so far, it either doesn't work at all or sortof works
sometimes as long as I sacrifice a dead chicken while dancing the rain
dance to the sound gods...
I'm not picky about it.. but I like to be able to listen to music while
I code and I gotta know when someone is trying to chat with me when gaim
is on another desktop

2)  Laptop Specific Stuff.  
	2a)  Location Manager:  I use this laptop in a variety of locations,
and want to know if there are any location manager type apps/settings
that I can use to just automagically change my network settings to match
where I am.  At home I use a static interal 192.168.0.x ip, at school I
have to use dhcp, at the office I use a different static....don't want
to have to manually change them all the time.
	2b)  Battery/Sleep:  Is the stuff needed for sleep built into the
kernel?  If I just close the lid will it go to sleep?  How about a
battery monitor application?  I know they exist.. but do they work on
Yellowdog on my machine?  Can I see (accurately) how much time I have
left on my battery?  Will it put the system to sleep automatically when
the battery is drained?  Will it wake back up again?  Will the system
clock be right when it does wake back up?  (This one in particular
drives me nuts about Mandrake...)
	2c)  Brightness/Volume controls via my function keys?  I heard that
Yellowdog does this.. if it is true, you guys rule.
	2d)  Mouse vs. Trackpad:  When I am home, I use my usb mouse.  I want
it to scroll.  I need it to scroll.  I live for the scroller wheel. 
When I am not at home, I use the trackpad.  No scrolling there, but need
a keymapping that will emulate the other mouse buttons... I got Mandrake
to do this (no, you don't want to know how) ... so will Yellowdog let me
do this?

3)  Apache.
	What's the deal with all the funky versions of Apache that are being
distroed with all the other versions of ppc linux?  How "standard" is
the Apache that is distributed with Yellowdog?  Does it have built in
support for php?  I assume it does... but you never know.  Is it enabled
by default?  Will I have to spend 3.5 hrs fighting with linuxconf,
httpd.conf, and webmin to make it do what I want? (Which is,
incedentally, just serve php web apps connected to a mysql server... not
rocket science...)

4)  Gnome/KDE config:
	In the latest version of Mandrake (8.2 beta 2) Gnome is
non-functional... KDE sortof works, but the configs are all linked to
the proprietary Mandrake stuff (which in turn relies on Gnome... )  It's
like a bizarre love triangle of config apps.  How are the configs done
in Yellowdog?  (System stuff, gui stuff, servers, users etc...)

5)  Package Management:
	I have heard horror stories from folks using RH 7.2 that the rpms can
easily get all messed up, and simple upgrades/package changes will bring
a system to it's knees... How is the package management in Yellowdog?

6)  OpenGL/other 3D stuff:
	Will the version of the X server included with Yellowdog do any 3D
stuff on my video card?  (it's the ATI 64, I think...)  I know that
there is a version of the X server (3.x.x) floating around out there
with *experimental* 3D support for the PC, but I have not found it for
ppc.

7)  Anything else you can think of:
	What other reasons can you think of to make me try out Yellowdog?  I am
typing this on a (mostly) functional install of Mandrake, but am pretty
fed up with some of the stuff I have to go through to make it do what I
want it to do.  While I want a perfect system (don't we all!) I am not
sure I want to go spend mucho hours fighting with yet another distro if
it won't be any better than what I have now...


Thanks tons for your feedback.  While I am getting to be a Linux
veteran, everyone is a newbie the first time they install a particular
distro.  Any info that you can provide to help me take the plunge into
yellowdog would be cool.

Thanks!

-Kimball Larsen