Comparing Linux Releases: Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 , Gentoo, LinuxPPC Live for Mac

Product: Yellow Dog Linux 3.0
From: YellowDogLinux.com
For: PowerPC Computers
Price: Evaluation version (roughly three CDs worth of binary code) is freely downloadable, and ISO CD images are available for a small fee from YDL.Net or for free here). The full version (on six CDs, three of which are source code) is about $85, including a T-shirt and support.
Pros: Based on Red Hat code, Yellow Dog has added a number of optimizations for Macs both new and old. There's hardware support for Apple eMac, GeForce 4 MX-based Power Macs and the 12" PowerBook. It runs on older PCI Macs, such as the 7500 or 8500, too. Supports apt-get for automated RPM updates. Also includes Mac-On-Linux with support for both Classic Mac OS and OS X.
Cons: See our Red Hat Linux test reports in the PC Software section.

Verdict: the best desktop Linux distro for Mac, but you should probably be running Mac OS X (possibly with the help of XPostFacto, if you have an older machine) and Apple's X11 instead.

Product: LinuxPPC Live
From: http://www.linuxppc.com/products/Live/
Price: Free. Requires a PPC-based Mac.
Pros: LinuxPPC Live is a special version of LinuxPPC Release 4 that can be booted from the Mac OS without having to partition your hard drive. Live includes the K Desktop Environment (a GUI), and basic disk utilities and commands -- just about everything you need to start learning Linux!
Cons: It is severely crippled. In fact, you can't really do much at all, except look at KDE's menu of options, virtually all of which except the K File Manager are disabled.

Installation
Downloading and installing LinuxPPC Live was relatively straightforward, with one exception. The file called vmlinux must be downloaded as a binary file. Our web browser insisted on downloading it as a text document, which broke the program. We used the binary transfer Fetch 3.03 to solve this problem. After un-gzipping a 40MB gzip file that becomes the 100MB body of the program environment, we followed the instructions and moved the files to a directory called LinuxPPC in the root directory of our system's hard drive. From there, you can boot LinuxPPC Live simply by double-clicking a MacOS program. That's right -- no partitioning or fiddling around with command-lines here. The only annoyance we encountered during the initial configuration of the program were two checkboxes that, when checked, did the exact opposite of what we expected them to. For example, when a checkmark is in the box labeled "no video driver," the system does have a video driver. Whatever!

From there, you see a couple of dozen screens of seemingly obligatory Linux command-line goobledegook fly past, and then the system boots up into the KDE graphical environment. Performance was good on our 240MHz 603E-based Mac, but we were disappointed that virtually all the functions in KDE are crippled in the "lite" 40MB download version. We could find no way to even open a terminal window, and after exiting KDE, the system dropped back to a command line and promptly froze. Next!!

Verdict: lame, but we'd like to see a fully-loaded version that runs from the Mac desktop like this. When we checked in May 2003, the site seemed to be down completely.

Verdict: Not the sort of "live CD" we were hoping for -- but it's a start. We're still looking for a CD able to boot a Mac that can be used to explore a full-featured Linux distro with a minimum of hassle and without requiring anything to be written to disc -- something like "Knoppix Linux 3.2" is on the x86 side.