Does Red Hack suck?

[Simeon Wiehler]

My experience runs surprisingly parallel to yours, Thierry.  I have been
enormously disappointed with YDL-4.0 on my PowerBook.  I happily ran DOS
without sound back in the early 80's and have no need for aural
satisfaction server-side today, but that a company's newest flagship
offering in the year 2004 cannot bring up sound on the very limited
range of existing Apple architectures is *totally* unacceptable, most
especially since sound worked fine in the 2.x and 3.x series.

On this list I was told simply that it couldn't be done, and that I
should get on with my life soundlessly or go back a YDL generation.  I
emailed Kai Schaft over at Terrasoft and he responded that sound wasn't
a priority for them.  Seems they're busy with navy and airforce server
contracts, and are doing some exciting work with the newest 64bit G5s.
Which leaves us long-time YellowDog users eating yellow dog-shit.

So my YDL-enhanced happiness came to an end and decided to try
Mandrake-PPC.  Ouch!  Many, many config files later, with no X at all
(not to mention no sound!) I decided Mandrake had not yet attained their
optimistically self-described RC1 status.  Their discussion list was
also very sparse which is not a good sign.

Then, while perusing distrowatch.com I chanced on a new Debian-based
release with the strange name "Ubuntu", which offered a PPC variant with
a 2.6.x kernel. A quick one-CD download, a hiccup-free text-based
install, and an earthy-brown Gnome 2.8 pops up. And OMG, OMG, OMG, sound
works fine.

Ubuntu is not perfect(!!)  Pbbuttonsd occasionally dies for no apparent
reason, mouse emulation appears not to be able to use my key preferences
for buttons 2 and 3, and it is Gnome based, which is a bit like trying
to get around in a strange city for the KDE-happy me.  But it has an
active developer community, and while I will continue to watch YDL with
interest (and just a little nostalgia) just in case things suddenly
change for the better, Ubuntu will stay on my PowerBook for now.

If nothing changes in the next few months, here is one Enhanced user who
will be canceling his subscription.  Terrasoft, are you listening??

--Simeon




On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 08:55 +0000, Thierry de Coulon wrote:
> After several trials to get YDL 4.0 to work on my PB 12" 1GHz (fine graphics 
> but still no sound), I also gave Mandrake PPC 10 (beta) a try - total 
> disaster, the thing won't even find a usb mouse, not to speak about no X at 
> all.
> Then , from some message on the web, I found out ubuntu (www.ubuntu.org) and, 
> while I was at it, I tried it as well. Miracle: a fast, clean installation, 
> sound, graphics...  The only thing is that they don't provide KDE and I don't 
> like Gnome so much. But this shows IT CAN BE DONE.
> 
> As both Mandrake and YDL base on Red Hat, the question is: does Red Had suck? 
> Should Yellow Dog not turn to another base? Considering that Ununtu is fairly 
> new and should only get better - and is and seems to want to remain free as a 
> free beer - YDL is going to have some problems.
> 
> Note that I did not try ubuntu on other hardware, so I possibly simly had 
> luck...
> 
> Thierry
> 
>