[istudent04]

I am going to be taking a Linux class next term, and I want to install Linux on my iMac DV 400MHz. Should I go with Yellow Dog or Mandrake?

[Mrjinglesusa]

Haven't used Mandrake, but the install of YDL is a BREEZE. Works great from what I've seen - I just installed it though...

[gorgonzola]

IMO, neither are very good, but go with whichever you find easier to install. After all, no point giving yourself a gratuitously hard time when you're just going to start learning Linux.

Debian is a *much*, *MUCH* better distribution, and does have a PowerPC version, but I think it's a bit harder to install. It will also help you a bit less, since it assumes you're not using Linux for the very first time and know what you're doing to some extent. While you may not want to bother with this right now, I'd recommend trying it once you've learned some Linux. It would be nice running it on your PPC.

[warpmoon]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:

Debian is a *much*, *MUCH* better distribution, and does have a PowerPC version, but I think it's a bit harder to install. It will also help you a bit less, since it assumes you're not using Linux for the very first time and know what you're doing to some extent. While you may not want to bother with this right now, I'd recommend trying it once you've learned some Linux. It would be nice running it on your PPC.

I'll second that. Debian is the best, but only after you had some experience with the way things work on Linux systems.

[machiavel]

I've tried both YD and Mandrake on an iMac 333. I had trouble with the Mandrake: the screen kept flashing on and off. YD was easy to install and worked, but it was slow and displayed poorly on the screen.

If you can download them off the internet (you'll need DSL, of course), I would try them all. If you're buy the Linux, you're safest bet is probably YD. Perhaps if you do a better job of reading the directions than I did you'll have better luck with it.

Incidentally, if you have an old PC tower that you can use, Red Hat Linux runs great on those machines. You can even, using XDarwin and remote desktop, run the Linux from your Mac. (It works surprisingly well.)

[cutterjohn]

...well I've just performed an install of YDL2.3 on my iBook (ice.)

(I got sick of slow as a long dead dog OSX on it.)

I had previously had a SuSE PPC distro installed on it, but it had many problems at the time, so I ended up wiping the partition and using it as extra space under MacOS.

Now, YDL2.3 on the same machine works great. Airport & sound pretty much worked out of the box or required a hell of alot less work to get working than SuSE. (If you are going to intall on an iBook go look at YDL's HOWTO section, specifically for setting powerbook power levels & ATI acceleration. There is also another accelerated ATI driver available, but I don't have the URL on this machine. Look through the mailing lists.)

Now as to Mandrake: I've seen enough posts on comp.os.linux.powerpc & various mailing lists that things just don't quite always work with it. i.e. YDL is usually recomended followed by Mandrake.

There are a couple of other options available too: Debian, & Gentoo, but Gentoo compiles almost EVERYTHING, so you'd better have broadband & not need the machine for a couple of days, but I've heard it's the fastest of the lot. (Also I'd really recomend against these if you are a Linux newbie as some assembly is required for these distros.)

AbiWord works with YDL, as does OpenOffice 1.01. Java seems to work if you get the latest IBM 1.3.1 SDk. Apparently earlier versions wanted/required an SMP machine. A second alternatie would be the Blackdown SDK, but it does not support JIT. All said and done, Java is still better under OSX(SURPRISE!)

Oh yeah, just do the everything instal 1.8G as YDL have some odd ideas about what should be installed even if selecting the dev workstation install(1.7G.) Also read the errata, modify your apt-get conf and run update as soon as you finish your install. OpenSSL & some of the other stuff(same as OSX 9/02 security update basically) need to be updated if you want a more "secure" system. (If you dont modify it, apt-get will look in the 2.2 dist first, then you'll have to run it again which will then having it correctly pointing to 2.3 dist updates...)

Lastly gcc is pretty old. It's still a 2.95 version with YDL-2.3, but it is probably suitable for your purposes, but YMMV. Whatever you do, do NOT, try to upgrade gcc & libs unless you REALLY know what you are doing. Things WILL break very badly if you mess up.

...well back to trying to get GNOME2 up & running... sigh...