Best Mac for Yellow Dog?

[Clinton MacDonald]

Friends:

I am thinking of selling my Wallstreet PowerBook that runs YDL 3 (to 
fund a new 12 inch PowerBook -- I can hardly wait). However, I still 
want to keep current with Yellow Dog Linux. Would an old PowerMac 7500 
(200 MHz 604 processor) be sufficient to run Yellow Dog 3.0?

I have an old Power Mac 7500 with a 200 MHz 604 chip. If I upgrade the 
hard drive to 2 GB or more, will that run YDL bearably well? Does anyone 
have experience with this or a similar Mac with YDL?

Should I look at something newer? Beige G3s are mentioned often on this 
list and can be had for next to nothing these days. Blue and White G3 
towers are also reasonable. However, does seeing them mentioned on this 
list mean that they are problematic machines? What do you think?

<aside>

I bought the Wallstreet as a "writer's machine" because of its 
incredible battery life (6-7 hours with two batteries), great keyboard, 
and the ability to add different peripherals to its drive bay. I also 
wanted to dual boot into YDL so that I could learn about Linux.

However, the Wallstreet never lived up to my expectations. First off, 
it's *HEAVY*, weighing in at almost 8 lbs. Mac OS 9 ran well on it, but 
OS X was a dog. It also never ran YDL optimally: sleep and resume were 
always flaky (I generally had to restart several services after sleep), 
and a second battery or a Zip drive in the drive bay would result in a 
kernel panic after a short while. Not a great Yellow Dog experience.

The Wallstreet, batteries and drive bay goodies will go to a good home. 
A starving artist acquaintance of mine wants to upgrade from his 
PowerBook 145 (ca. 1992!), and the Wallstreet would allow him to keep 
all his SCSI peripherals. I will give him a good deal (perhaps I can 
barter for some artwork...).

I am hoping that the 12 inch PowerBook is my mythical "perfect writer's 
machine" (Euan Maxwell from this list has given it a thumbs up review). 
I don't think that YDL is supported yet on the new 12 inch PowerBooks, 
but that is fine with me -- Mac OS X will scream on that machine.

</aside>

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT net>