Dan Burcaw (dburcaw@terraplex.com)
Tue, 20 Apr 1999 21:38:09 -0600 (MDT)
On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Chris Leech wrote:
> Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that Champion-1.0 is so similar to RH,
> it's nice to already be familiar with how the system is set up.
>
> But the fact that it's just a RH recompile shows through _way_ to much.
> For instance, why do I have fdisk and cfdisk (OK, so they're part of the
> utils-linux package) which do me no good but not pfdisk? I had to
> download the source RPM from LinuxPPC-pre-R5 and rebuild. Other important
> Mac specifics seem to be missing too, like sndvolmix and the rest of
> pmac-utils.
> At least the apache update changed the default web page to indicate that I
> was running YellowDog, not RedHat :)
> Now, just why do the initscripts read /etc/redhat-release?
>
> Anyone else care to comment? Yes, I'd rather time be spent on porting
> software than changing minor details like this - but it just doesn't seem
> right in a commercial product. Or am I just being to picky?
You're right. YDL is based on RedHat. We don't deny that. It's also based
on RedHat for some very good reasons. Before I go into those, please
understand that porting a linux distribution from one platform to another
is a HUGE task. Linux/PPC developers including myself and people which
have no affilation with our company have been working for over a year on a
Glibc 2.0/2.1 based port. We have been falling Red Hat Rawhide since day
one and everytime there's something knew available, we build it, make
patches, submit our changes to Red Hat, etc.
This is not a small task.. it's taken a year to get to the point it is
now.
Some key reasons for having another RedHat-like distribution....
LinuxPPC, TurboLinux, and YellowDog Linux users can use the same
RPMS. (assuming they are using preR5, and when TurboLinux's latest
distribution is out for PPC).
We, as a development community feel that it's VERY important to have
a common codebase to work from.
RedHat has developed a very solid distribution. They're installation
program is very refined, they've written a great package management
tool, and their code allows us to provide a more complete port to
PowerPC
Champion Server 1.0 was developed for a few reasons. First, it's
a release for experienced users who need a current environment from
which to use (glibc 2.1, egcs 1.1.x, etc.)
Second, we know the power of PowerPC machines as servers. I've been
using Linux on PowerPC in a server setting for over a year now. My
machines have never seen ANY downtime (except for hardware upgrades).
I also found that MKlinux and LinuxPPC were still missing elements
that are commonplace on the x86, sparc, alpha Linux ports.
These are not all of the reasons we developed the product, but
those are some of the important factors.
As far as just taking someones work and slapping it on a cd, we
have no intention of doing that. Our developers are making active
contributions to the Linux/PPC community and the Linux community as
a whole.
Our Gone Home distribution will introduce you all to a lot of the
advancements that we're working on everyday.
Red Hat's established a core distribution that we can work from,
but there is a lot to be improved and that's what we're all about.
Dan
Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
email: dburcaw@yellowdoglinux.com
website: http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri Apr 30 1999 - 11:30:13 MDT