Yellow Dog Linux

I was on the Fixstars site and found a fairly recent news post that they have an "Enterprise Linux OS for Optimal GPU Computing." Now if I'm not wrong, then nVidia only develops drivers for x86. So does this mean it is the end of the world?

uncholowapo wrote:I was on the Fixstars site and found a fairly recent news post that they have an "Enterprise Linux OS for Optimal GPU Computing." Now if I'm not wrong, then nVidia only develops drivers for x86. So does this mean it is the end of the world?

Depends what you mean by "end of the world". Remember that IBM announced that development for the Cell is over but incorporation of technologies derived from the process will be utilized in future chips which incorporate a mix of Cell based technologies with specialized Intel based chips which will look something like Toshiba's SpursEngine, which already exists.

This means of course, something more on the level of the Mayan Calendar prophecy of 2012 which makes no sense unless one understands the fact mostly overlooked that the Mayan Calendar is cyclical meaning that the end of one cycle or age invariably leads to the beginning of another. An idea, which in this context, is really quite exciting as the future of high end advanced chips akin to the SpursEngine is quite bright and scintillating and Fixstars has planned that YDEL will be a part of that.

So does this mean it is the end of the world?

Well I see the following events as a foretelling of things :

1) Sony dropped the pfat PS3 and went to the slim without Linux support.

2) Fixstars never came foward with any information about resolving / fixing the HDMI "bricking" caused by the Sony firmware release.

3) The PowerPC CPU has been dropped by Apple from its product line.

4) YDL 6.2 has been out a loooong time and no news of any future release progress for the PS3 YDL evangalists to brag about.

5) Bundled software within YDL is out of date to whats being release within other linux distrobutions.

6) Netbooks & nettop PC's cost less than a PS3 and can run more current versions of Linux with latest software bundles.


Prognosis is not the end-of-the-world, but YDL seems to be going the dinosaur route and I'd be looking up in the sky to see if there is an asteroid headed this way anytime soon to relegate PS3 / YDL bundle to the wikipedia retro year mid-2000 decade computer history catagory same as what happened with the PS2 Linux.


Hmmm, on second thought, Sony's slim PS3 was the asteroid that killed off YDL linux on PS3 machines.

Taellik

Taellik wrote:2) Fixstars never came foward with any information about resolving / fixing the HDMI "bricking" caused by the Sony firmware release.

Just FYI - this is completely a Sony issue, not a Fixstars issue. It affects PS2 emulation in the GameOS as well. And - since it only appears to affect TVs with out-dated HDMI chipsets, Sony hasn't moved too quickly on it.

If you want this resolved, I'd contact Sony. There's nothing Fixstars can do about it.

Cheers,
Paul

Taellik wrote:5) Bundled software within YDL is out of date to whats being release within other linux distrobutions.

I think we've been through this (several?) times before ... YDL is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux / Centos. They only do major releases every couple of years or so, and RHEL 5 is most closely aligned with Fedora Core 6. There are pros and cons to this ... a big plus being stability in terms of things operating in an expected fashion, and the downside being that it's not always easy (or even possible) to check out the latest and greatest stuff. If you compare apples to apples then YDL is not too far out of line with RHEL/Centos. If you compare to non-enterprise Linux distros then yes, of course it's behind vs. Fedora / Ubuntu / SuSE / etc.

If there were going to be another major release for the PS3, I'd imagine it would be based on RHEL / Centos 6 which is not out yet. Of course it could be that there will be no more YDL releases for PPC architecture ... so far I haven't seen any definitive statement regarding that.

billb wrote:I think we've been through this (several?) times before ...

You mean, like here?

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5247&p=29548#p29548

Cheers,
Paul