Iguana wrote:http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20140203
Once the most popular distribution developed exclusively for PowerPC computers, the Fedora-based Yellow Dog Linux has been in terminal decline ever since Apple's surprise switch to the Intel architecture back in 2006. Although the project continued to make new releases, its website infrastructure has been slowly eroding due to lack of maintenance and updates. Last week, Fixstars, the company that owns Yellow Dog Linux, also announced the upcoming closure of its premium YDL.net web portal: "Dear YDL.net user. Since the creation of YDL.net service nearly a decade ago, many new and much improved email, calendar, and blog services have been made available which are able to eclipse Fixstars offerings in terms of both reliability, ease of use, and number of features. As such Fixstars has decided to discontinue the YDL.net email, blog, and calendar features as it has become no longer feasible to host these services. We understand that this is a inconvenience to many of you and we will attempt to delay the discontinuation of service until March 2014 although server failure may occur, resulting in the loss of user data." Is this the definite end of Yellow Dog as a Linux distribution?
HI Iguana,
The version of YDL which supported the old PowerPC systems produced by Apple, and later Sony's PS3 is pretty much entirely user supported by now which means vast sections of unreliable software. Unfortunately in Linux environments due to all the malware around in comparison to the old days when the phenomenal Kai Staats ran Terra Soft Solutions (TSS) which was comprised of equally phenomenal engineers and support staff which later morphed into Fixstars. I'm not going to go into the full history of how we came to this point, but Apple is not the only culprit.
Apple (Steve Jobs) made a cogent business decision based on IBM's behavior at the time regarding PowerPC chip design. The chips being offered by IBM to Apple were, simply stated, of a lower caliber than what they were selling and developing along their high-end line at that time. The experience I had gained working with super computers for a major hospital provided me with the background to follow the discussion on IBM's technical blog site discussing the PowerPC. However, the best insight may be that of
John Siracusa who worked for Steve Jobs in that era when IBM was "short changing" Apple. For comparison, the chips in the first Macs were the same ones sold to companies building the super computers of the day - Stratus, Tandem, and others. Jobs ,and a hand full of others knew this as I did; it wasn't a secret. What was a secret was how Jobs made such a powerful chip so much damn fun and easy to use! Jobs therefore was one of those few saavy people on the planet who could smell a bad deal - people forget that by the time Jobs came back to Apple he had already successfully started and run another wildly successful computer company (Next) and a completely new operating system (BeOS) -
correction: the NeXTSTEP OS - while Sculley (who took over after Jobs was fired from Apple) was looking confused and dragging Apple down with him. There were a flood of talent leaving Apple (and every other company) to do Next and build BeOS (
correction: the NeXTSTEP OS ). There were many former Apple developers who left supporting and building for Apple and followed Jobs. It drove Sculley and his team nuts. This was during that time when Apple was still stuck with Finder version (9) which was ok but nothing compared to the NeXTSTEP OS and man that was clear everywhere!
I mention this hidden, and oft forgotten, piece of Jobs life and history because Jobs was not just a "talking head"; he loved and pushed engineering to artistry which has not been seen since Da Vinci! By the time Jobs came back to Apple - Sculley was out (do the research yourself to examine why). Jobs incorporated Next into the Apple hardware AND incorporated BeOS -
correction: the NeXTSTEP OS into what became OS X morphing Berkeley's Unix into Darwin and that is what survives today. You cannot snow a fellow that Job's was - IBM tried and Jobs running Apple again was not in any mood to be fooled by anyone. This of course is quite a different background given that by this point after Jobs return the PowerPC as then built by IBM was limited in capabilities anyway; in other words any technically saavy person realized the split and upcoming ending of the consumer level availability of PowerPC chips had been written on the "proverbial wall" for anyone familiar and following engineering chip design specific to the PowerPC very clearly. This is why Motorola, in a panic, started working on other products which led to and became the mobile phone market.
Here is where things get nasty. It was clear that Apple was moving on - although a little more public lead announcement would have been nice. However, that is not what really affected TSS in my opinion. What pressured TSS into finally disappearing with almost "nowhere else to go" was the fact that Sony management decided to kill access to the PS3 by removing the "Other OS" option which permitted a "guest OS", such as Linux to run on the PS3. Up until that point, TSS had managed to survive brilliantly by moving from being the only Linux vendor which Apple recognized such that one could buy an Apple from TSS without violating the Apple warranty throughout the entire family of Apple computers to becoming the primary Linux vendor running on the PS3 -
turning the PS3 away from merely being a toy into an intensely powerful true multi-core computer for the family - at home and a cheap powerful multi-core supercomputer available previously only in high end systems sold at $500K and up! The PS3, instead of remaining a toy, through YDL, could now be utilized by military and medical research centers efficiently for a few hundred dollars instead of the most expensive systems available at the time. This transition by TSS allowed many people to use not only the PS3 but Yellow Dog LInux running on the PS3! This may have been something that Sony's later management may have frowned upon over time. I need to clarify that the initial CEO and management team at Sony which participated with and permitted TSS access allowing this amazing achievement - was not the same CEO and management team which decided later to kill access to the OtherOS. This change was so huge that those who understood and invested in the PS3 because of TSS and the existence of the OtherOS option - took Sony to court. When consumers take a company to court that tells you how messed up a decision has to be.
The problem was however that Sony is a Japanese company with very different views of business as a result of the change of CEOs and management style; they decided they wanted a game computer to compete with Nintendo and Microsoft's Xbox. The sad fact is that Ninetendo's game computer as well as the Xbox are PowerPC computers - but they are locked from outside access and are designed to not run Linux at all. In fact they are intentionally designed in such a way to test for Linux and cease to function if any modification has been made to the manufacturer firmware. It is this fact that caused TSS grief, as well as grief to the many, many people who loved the work TSS produced. Sony's decision to close the OtherOS option - forced YDL 6.2 into an ever declining state of use and age to the point of extreme vulnerability remaining users experience today.
Fixstars to survive had to go extremely high-end with outstanding hardware and bring YDL up to the capability of supporting PowerPC hardware at that level. Problem? How many families do you know can put out for the starting cost of a computing system where the RAM alone can begin at $8,000? The Fixstars Page elaborating their hardware/software efforts can be found
here.
It may be useful to review IBM's pages just to observe that no prices are mentioned anywhere, suggesting an entry level price point to computing that is nothing short of stratospheric. See this page:
here.