Subject: Re: Linux (YDL) vs. Linux (Intel flavours)
From: Robert Brandtjen (rob@prometheusmedia.com)
Date: Thu Mar 14 2002 - 11:03:02 MST
On Thursday 14 March 2002 08:57 am, Eric D. wrote:
> Hello ya'll, I assume there are people here who've had experience on both
> Mac and Intel for Linux installs. How do the Intel builds compare to the
> YDL for Mac (or the other Linuxes for Mac)? I presume there may be flavours
> that are simpler and have a more refined user interfaces than YDL or are
> they all effectively the same?
Eric - this all depends on what your personal preferences are what you intend
to do with the box -
Slackware- is for minimalists, not available for PPC machines.
RH and YDL are essentially the same- RH is the most successful/widely used
Distro out there, they update very fast through up2date which is similar to
YUP and both YDL and RH allow for a full user experience and personal control
of the box - in other words, they both allow you a lot of user power. You
must remember this caveate however, there are simply some things available
for ix86 that are not available for PPC, perhaps someday they will be there.
Mandrake - bleeding edge Linux - sometimes to bleeding edge - i.e. many times
binaries/source have not been updated to use the libs that mandrake has
installed. Mandrake is geared toward a very friendly desktop environment-
thus, IMHO, it also limits your power/access, unless you seek out and turn
things back on- while not as bad as Ximian (very pretty, very limited - which
is why I got rid of it, too bad it doesn't ask before it deletes all of those
system control functions from the start application). It should be noted
that Mandrake is in trouble financially- they have largely been a GUI and
installer put in over RH distros and as such are essentially duplicating
efforts now in trying to further distinguish themselves from RH and SUSE.
SUSE - OK distro, has support for somethings "out of the box" that YDL and
even RH do not - like mac only UW SCSI cards from yesteryear. However, last I
checked, they do not offer downloadable ISOs and instead only offer install
via FTP, which while not bad, can be a pain, even if you download it to your
very own FTP server.
Debian- nice distro, very very old kernels, binaries, etc. it isn't even
close to being cutting edge, but it's OK if you feel being almost 3 years
behind in some respects is OK.
As far as advantages of X86 over PPC, well, there is far more hardware out
there in the land of x86, it is faster in most real world applications. Which
isn't to say it's better hardware - Apple does build a strong box.. however,
there is no such thing anymore in Apple land as a 6 PCI slot machine, or even
a 7 slot PCI machine - which I do have and do use. nor is there MB SCSI
anymore in Apple machines, you must use a slot for that- there is also no ECC
ram support or support for redundant powersupplies, etc - Apple does not
build a server class machine anymore. They may again someday. The Briqs are
pretty cool- though spendy now I think, in terms of horsepower - but that
isn't their fault, notice that you cannot buy an upgrade CPU faster then a G4
500 MHZ ever since Apple went through it's drought in CPU speed upgrades. I
suspect that Apple put the bite on them and you simply wont see a 1 ghz CPU
upgrade, at least not until apple makes a 2.5 ghz CPU box.
If gaming floats your boat, x86 has more support, WINE (Loki is gone,
although some games are still available, they are old now) is capable of
running many many games just fine, no discernible speed loss, wine is pretty
darn cool - it operates much differently then MOL. also, if the box isn't a
server, you can always (shudder) dual boot into windows to run those games in
native mode.
On the other hand, MOL allows you to run your native mac apps in native mode
with very little discernible speed loss (better then Apple's "classic mode,
IMHO) while still running linux - which is nice if the box is also a server -
in this respect, it is very much like OLD OSXServer.
Flame away................
:-)
-- Robert Brandtjen -------------------------------------- Web Site Creation and Hosting Services Hostmaster@prometheusmedia.com www.prometheusmedia.com
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