Subject: Re: When will the YDL 2.2 iso be available for FTP download?
From: Robert Brandtjen (rob@prometheusmedia.com)
Date: Sun Mar 17 2002 - 22:39:54 MST
On Sunday 17 March 2002 05:35 pm, Eric D. wrote:
> Yipes, I have no idea where $500 USD comes from. Last I saw OS X for was
> $130 USD. OS X Server maybe $500 USD, but server Linuxes can also cost an
> arm and a leg if you want the support documentation and CDs ($300 for the
> RedHat that I saw -- that's not a whole lot cheaper than OS X).
I'm running RH 7.2 (and 7.1 before that) it cost me nothing, but because I
like the distro so much, and because I am so impressed with up2date and RHN,
I voluntarily pay for their monthly work group service fee, though you need
do so to use RHN. The updates are faster then either Apple or MS put together.
>Hardware cost has nothing to do with the cost of the OS in this situation.
>If you're running YDL you're also willing to shell out for Apple's hardware,
>aren't you ;)
I did run it on a Umax S900 at one point - that aside, Apples dual 1 ghz box
with one gig of ram is around 3500.00 USD - with an Nvidia card (what is it
though, 32 megs?)
Here is what I built two months ago for just under 1000.00 USD (note that
memory has risen in recent weeks).
dual P3 1.2 Ghz cpu's
1.5 gig of ram (133 MHZ 512 MB Kingston Ram sticks)
capable of 2 GIGS of ECC ram (ECC ram not available on Macs)
Geforce 2 Ti (64 megs of ram)
4U rack mount case with dual redundant Power supplies (not available on Apple
G4's)
5 PCI slots with a 6th 4xAGP slot (apple only has 2x AGP and 4 slots)
on the MB IDE RAID (supported in RH 7.1 with drivers)
(for an extra 100.00 USD you can get dual UW SCSI on the MB)
3 3.5 inch bays
3 5.25 inch bays
Dual 10/100 ethernet cards (for redundancy)
filtered cooling fans (removable)
4 FIrewire ports (MB)
4 USB ports on 2 USB hubs (MB)- Mac only has one hub
Boot-up diagnostic LED's (6 lights) which, according to what is red or green,
tell what piece(s) of hardware stopped the early boot process (if there is a
problem)
MB IR
MB sensor chips for cpu0 and cpu1 temps
MB sensor chips for cpu MB and ram chip temps
MB sensor chips for voltages (cpu core, MB, etc)
MB sensor chips for cpu fans
MB sensor chips for case fans
Case intrusion alarm (box locks with key)
4 IDE buses
Case is SCSI hot swap compatible
Power supplies are hot swap
Dual IBM Ultra Star 40 Gig drives
Creative sound Labs Audigy card (not the platinum)
DVD player - no floppy
It took me one hour to assemble it and 1 hour to install RH and fully
configure it and transfer a tarball of websites and have it up and serving
sites to the world.
Now I do get a small (10%) discount from http://generalnanosystems.com, but
it still would cost less then a new iMac - let alone a dual G4-
I know, it's missing DVD burner, but they are available for around 450.00 USD
- so I would be around 1500.00 retail with a DVD burner.
Performance ? OMG, everything is instantaneous - to give you a real life
speed comparison, Unreal Tournament - still the most processor intensive game
out there, loads in 7 seconds from a fresh boot - 3 seconds if it was loaded
into Memory recently - on a 633 G4 mac, it takes well over a minute to load
to the intro movie - compare that one. I matched it against xlr8yourmac.com's
benchamrking of the new mac - it blows it away as well - and P3's are old
stuff now, but AFAIK, no one makes a P4 dual processor MB, although there are
AMD ones out now - but my next one, I want a quad processor board.
So yes, you do in fact pay an exhorbitant fee for Mac OSX - not only that,
but can you buy a faster processor for your Mac ? NO, you can no longer buy a
faster CPU then what Apple sold to you - not new any way.
Upon initial install of the OS (RH 7.2) all peripherals were recognized - all
including my SCSI CD-RW drive, DVD-CD player, MS 5 button Intellimouse, ATTO
SCSI card, Sound card, video card, everything - everything, nothing,
including the SCSI (which was added after the install, correctly found during
boot process and configured) has not worked the way it should.
In truth, YDL also worked fine on my now aging macs that are here - all with
upgraded CPUs from powerlogix.
Now, tell me again your hardware isn't over priced. tell me again about
hardware problems. You can't even touch hardware this powerful in the Mac
world.
All Linux Distros are worth a minimum of 500.00 USD if sold as proprietary
software - why? they allow you, the owner, to do what you want with them - no
per seat liscense, no specific hardware support/non support - i.e. it
supports all known platforms (within reason) and no one forcing upgrades on
you - take what you want, leave what you dont want.
SO yes, a paltry 20 or 30.00 USD per download is nothing - absolutely nothing
- especially when Apple charged for OSX 10.0 to OSX 10.1 upgrade. If Red Hat,
Mandrake, YDL, Suse, slackware, etc can allow free downloads of their major
updates, then why, tell me, did apple charge ? Please dont tell me about CD
costs - after all, isn't the new Mac supposed to allow you the freedom to
"rip, burn, play" ?
Your hardware is what ? can do what ?
-- Robert Brandtjen -------------------------------------- Web Site Creation and Hosting Services Hostmaster@prometheusmedia.com www.prometheusmedia.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Sun Mar 17 2002 - 22:54:32 MST