Terra Soft Solutions support

[taughd]

I have an older PM G4 400mHz and I have been interested in trying Yellow Dog Linux on as an alternative to Mac OS X. I have not upgraded to OS X yet. I am not that experienced with Linux and would like to have some initial support available if needed. I had contacted Terra Soft Solutions, Inc. presales by email on two occasions recently trying to get a couple of general questions answered about using YDL and never received an answer to either. I find this disturbing. Maybe I should take that as a warning not to deal with their company or maybe they are having some staffing problem. I also wonder if they perhaps are not interested in the basic desktop user. I understand that they only offer installation support for your basic hardware and no peripherals. Has anyone successfully dealt with their customer service? I was also wondering about their manual that comes with the support service option. How helpful is it? Finally, one of the reasons I have not transitioned to Mac OS X is due to concerns about speed of the operating system on my current setup. Does YDL run any faster on the older Macs than Mac OS X does? Thanks.

[taughd]

Just to set the record straight, I wanted to post that I finally did receive an email response to the request for information that I had sent to YDL's contact source. Better late than never.

[StarKnight83]

as a quick note; actually quite a few peripherals are supported (compile a kernel and take a look at all the diff. devices) yes YDL runs faster on older hw then OSX does (have a ibook se so i know) As for personel. TSS is a smaller company, and you have to remember that with any company who provides support contracts the more money the more attention you get. They do try to do their best at trouble shooting and have done some really great patches for the kernel. Spend some time watching the mailing lists or on IRC (where the engineers spend some of their time) and you'll see this. And while at times it may seem i work for them; i wish i did, but i dont have the skills necesary, just *nix admin skills and what ive learned by breaking (which is a lot ) so dive in learn something. And to be honest, if tinkering isnt something you like doing and just want a system that always works w/ no user input then stick w/ OSX but if you like to play w/ stuff linux rocks

[taughd]

Thanks for your response to my concerns about YDL. I was interested in buying the YDL installation CD set with the support option because I am not knowledgable enough with Linux systems to feel comfortable figuring things out for myself on the Linux OS. I haven't found a Linux reference book equal to the quality of troubleshooting found in the Mac OS "Missing Manual" series or anything up to the works by Ted Landau on his Mac books.Of course in retrospect, Mac Os 9 was relaively simple and more easily managed.I had subscribed to the YDL beginners' mailing list and visited these forums on several occasions to try to get a feel for the community support that might be available. It just seems that the postings are relatively sparse and couldn't be relied upon. I think that I am willing to put in the effort to learn how to manage a Linux setup, but I am afraid that YDL isn't the best distribution for me at this time. Going to Mac OS X seems like getting back into the same rut I found myself in with Mac OS 9. All I really learned how to do was point and click, leaving myself at the mercy of Apple again every time they make shifts in their sofware or hardware and stop supporting past versions.I don't want to do that again. Hopefully, if I can find the right distribution, that won't happen again.

[linomics]

The Mac OS "Missing Manual" series as well as the works by Ted Landau on his Mac books are indeed good!

L.

[linomics]

I have an older PM G4 400mHz and I have been interested in trying Yellow Dog Linux on as an alternative to Mac OS X. I have not upgraded to OS X yet. I am not that experienced with Linux and would like to have some initial support available if needed. I had contacted Terra Soft Solutions, Inc. presales by email on two occasions recently trying to get a couple of general questions answered about using YDL and never received an answer to either. I find this disturbing. Maybe I should take that as a warning not to deal with their company or maybe they are having some staffing problem. I also wonder if they perhaps are not interested in the basic desktop user. I understand that they only offer installation support for your basic hardware and no peripherals. Has anyone successfully dealt with their customer service? I was also wondering about their manual that comes with the support service option. How helpful is it? Finally, one of the reasons I have not transitioned to Mac OS X is due to concerns about speed of the operating system on my current setup. Does YDL run any faster on the older Macs than Mac OS X does? Thanks.

with their company or maybe they are having some staffing problem. I also wonder if they perhaps are not interested in the basic desktop user. I understand that they only offer installation support for your basic hardware and no peripherals. Has anyone successfully dealt with their customer service? I was also wondering about their manual that comes with the support service option. How helpful is it? Finally, one of the reasons I have not transitioned to Mac OS X is due to concerns about speed of the operating system on

OI think this is not true:

My stratigy is to make sure that nsswitch is seeing winbind before fiddling with pam. Maybe this is not the right way.