ZDNet: New OS options galore

Jul 07, 2001, 20:00 (10 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Stephan Somogyi)

Stephan Somogyi reviews the many operating systems available for the PowerPC platform, including Yellow Dog Linux, SuSE Linux for PowerPC, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. To his surprise, he found that they performed better on the PowerPC architecture than Mac OS X.

"While I simply haven't had the time to install all these different OSes, I have had a chance to get SuSE Linux 7.1, OpenBSD 2.9 and NetBSD 1.5 onto my 266MHz thrasher iMac. Of course, given the strength of my personal Murphy field, this machine is the one with a version of Open Firmware that makes booting these OSes somewhat less than straightforward at times. On the glass-half-full side of the equation, I learned rather a lot about how to drive Open Firmware in the process."

"None of these OSes is nearly as easy to install as OS X--or even Darwin--is on this same iMac. That said, these Unixes have significantly more mature code-bases and appear to behave in a more sprightly manner on the same hardware than Apple's new flagship OS."

Complete Story

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• Linux Journal: Perfect Pair: PowerPC and Linux (May 13, 2001)
• LinuxPR: SuSE Linux Releases SuSE Linux 7.1 PowerPC Edition (Mar 29, 2001)
• LinuxNewbie.org: Installing Yellow Dog Linux On an IMAC DV SE(Oct 17, 2000)
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