Yellow Dog Linux

and I am dying to switch over to Linux. I used Mandrake when I was stuck with PC's and loved it. The only trouble is that I can't decide which distro will go best with my laptop. Does Yellow Dog have a graphical installer? Will it be a breeze to install? Thank you for any help in advance. Cheers

I am writing this from my new Yellow Dog Linux box. I will never go back.

actually I believe that a lot of people here dual-boot their apples (i do; both a hdd install and a firewire install-though only the internal hdd has osx) The gui is pretty nice (when it works right-depends on your hardware) but the text installl seems to be easy enough as most people new to linux can get it to work (never tried a text install)

text install is fine
especially on slower machines i really prefer it.

I have YDL 3.1 on my PowerBook G3 (Pismo, 500 MHz) and it has really resurrected this trusty old warhorse for me. As Mac OSX has gotten bigger and more complex, relying more and more on newer architecture for the eye candy, I have found the G3 processor and 8 MB VRAM just don't work as well. Since transitioning to OSX on my PowerMac I just can't go back to OS 9. YellowDog Linux to the rescue! The snappiness is back and better than under OS 9, way better than OS X.

For your iBook I highly recommend YDL. Dual boot with OS X gives you the best of both worlds and for me was simple. YDL's graphic installer holds your hand every step of the way.

jlight. Which version of YDL did you install in your iBook?

If you installed ydl4.1, did your iBook modem (iBook G3 500MHz uses a hardware modem) work?

I ask b/c I have that same iBook model and my modem works nice in Ubuntu 5.10 (kernel 2.6.12) but fails under ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10 (kernels 2.6.15 and 2.6.17 respectivelly).

jlight wrote:I am writing this from my new Yellow Dog Linux box. I will never go back.

Yeah it is pretty great! It made a 3400c Power Book of mine actually usable again and I love it on the iBook too.

I am trying to install YD on an iBook G3 Dual USB (white) PPC 500 and the text install works, but all GUI (install & setup) are shifted to the bottom right of the screen and beyond, sort of like if the horizontal and vertical controls were off on a tv/monitor. I am doing a full original install with bootable cds. I think the YD I'm installing is the most recent release. I've tried getting help on the mac forums and the linux forums, but nobody seems to know what to do. This is a laptop from 2001 so support should not be a problem.