LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Info]

I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.

-Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
-Other than recompiling on wintel for delivery, can anyone see
potential problems with using LinuxPPC in a RedHat shop?
-Any known problems with JAVA tools (JDK, JSDK, Tomcat)?



-----------------------------------------------------------------
    Mark Lundquist                    Bit Twiddlers, Inc.
    Director                          703.627.1458
    mlundquist@bittwiddlers.com       http://www.bittwiddlers.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Rich West]

The best person to answer your question would be Jason Haas at LinuxPPC,
Inc.  He'd be able to give you both an honest answer and a politically
correct one. :)

Just my 2 cents, but I don't think you will have any problems integrating
LinuxPPC in a Redhat environment (I did it at home.. in fact, it's the
reverse.  I introduced a Redhat box into a LinuxPPC environment shortly
after I got my RHCE).

LinuxPPC is very close to RedHat 6.1.  Sure, there are some minor
differences, but those are mostly related to dealing directly with the
architecture differences.

Java is a touchy subject.. so far, with the Blackdown port, things seem
rather stable and reliable.  However I am not the person to even put my 2
cents in on this one.. :)

-Rich

Info wrote:

> I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
> and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.
>
> -Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
> -Other than recompiling on wintel for delivery, can anyone see
> potential problems with using LinuxPPC in a RedHat shop?
> -Any known problems with JAVA tools (JDK, JSDK, Tomcat)?
>


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[John L Grantham]

On 1/3/00 6:17 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
inspired to say:

>
>On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Info wrote:
>
>> I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
>> and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.
>>
>> -Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
>
>That's what all the PPC Linux distros are based on, yes.

<nitpick>Not Debian...</nitpick>

>> -Other than recompiling on wintel for delivery, can anyone see
>> potential problems with using LinuxPPC in a RedHat shop?
>> -Any known problems with JAVA tools (JDK, JSDK, Tomcat)?
>
>You mean taking LinuxPPC and trying to rebuild it on x86?  Good luck.  The
>words source compatible tend to be somewhat exaggerated when it comes to
>real-world use, especially where RPMs are involved.  Just MHO.

Agreed. However, if you want to use LinuxPPC for development for Red Hat,
so long as you have decent cross-compilers I don't see why there would be
a major problem. But Java tools are still pretty much Intel-centric
AFAIK. (Now isn't that an oxymoron...Java on one platform. ;-P )

cya

John

---

John Grantham | Freelance Graphic and Web Designer
              | Dipl.-Designer (FH)
              | Homepage: http://surf.to/multimedia
              | MacLinux: http://www.maclinux.de/


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Matt Porter]

On Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 09:17:27AM -0800, David A. Gatwood wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Info wrote:
>
> > I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
> > and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.
> >
> > -Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
>
> That's what all the PPC Linux distros are based on, yes.

Actually, I'd say that LinuxPPC and Yellowdog track RedHat.

Debian, SuSE, and TurboLinux do not.  The only similarity for the latter two
would be the use of rpm packaging.

--
Matt Porter
mmporter@home.com
This is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows reboot.

** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[David A. Gatwood]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, John L Grantham wrote:

> On 1/3/00 6:17 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
> inspired to say:
>
> >
> >On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Info wrote:
> >
> >> I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
> >> and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.
> >>
> >> -Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
> >
> >That's what all the PPC Linux distros are based on, yes.
>
> <nitpick>Not Debian...</nitpick>

Is the Debian distribution a working distribution now?  I'd gotten the
impression that it was still a work-in-progress.


> >> -Other than recompiling on wintel for delivery, can anyone see
> >> potential problems with using LinuxPPC in a RedHat shop?
> >> -Any known problems with JAVA tools (JDK, JSDK, Tomcat)?
> >
> >You mean taking LinuxPPC and trying to rebuild it on x86?  Good luck.  The
> >words source compatible tend to be somewhat exaggerated when it comes to
> >real-world use, especially where RPMs are involved.  Just MHO.
>
> Agreed. However, if you want to use LinuxPPC for development for Red Hat,
> so long as you have decent cross-compilers I don't see why there would be
> a major problem. But Java tools are still pretty much Intel-centric
> AFAIK. (Now isn't that an oxymoron...Java on one platform. ;-P )

Heheheh


David


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[John L Grantham]

On 1/3/00 8:28 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
inspired to say:

>
>On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, John L Grantham wrote:
>
>> On 1/3/00 6:17 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
>> inspired to say:
>>
>> >
>> >On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Info wrote:
>> >
>> >> I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
>> >> and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.
>> >>
>> >> -Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
>> >
>> >That's what all the PPC Linux distros are based on, yes.
>>
>> <nitpick>Not Debian...</nitpick>
>
>Is the Debian distribution a working distribution now?  I'd gotten the
>impression that it was still a work-in-progress.

Define "working". :-)

Seriously, my impression (admittedly I haven't tried Debian yet, though I
have no pressing need to do so--even though I would like to try out
apt-get...) is that it's working, but still officially in beta.

Statement from Debian: "Debian/PowerPC is considered to be stable as of
February, 1998, and is currently being consolidated for release. More
than 90% of the Debian packages are available, with the remaining
packages being processed. Debian/PowerPC will be officially released with
the next version of Debian (2.2; code-named potato)."

Speaking of which, would apt work on a Red Hat-based distro at all?

cya

John

---

John Grantham | Freelance Graphic and Web Designer
              | Dipl.-Designer (FH)
              | Homepage: http://surf.to/multimedia
              | MacLinux: http://www.maclinux.de/


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, John L Grantham wrote:
> On 1/3/00 8:28 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
> inspired to say:
> >Is the Debian distribution a working distribution now?  I'd gotten the
> >impression that it was still a work-in-progress.
>
> Define "working". :-)
>
> Seriously, my impression (admittedly I haven't tried Debian yet, though I
> have no pressing need to do so--even though I would like to try out
> apt-get...) is that it's working, but still officially in beta.

Yep.

> Statement from Debian: "Debian/PowerPC is considered to be stable as of
> February, 1998, and is currently being consolidated for release. More
> than 90% of the Debian packages are available, with the remaining
> packages being processed. Debian/PowerPC will be officially released with
> the next version of Debian (2.2; code-named potato)."

The main difficulty is installing it. Once the initial base system is
installed, everything works fine.

> Speaking of which, would apt work on a Red Hat-based distro at all?

No.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

		    Geert (extracted Debian base.tar.gz somewhere in 1997)

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- Linux/{m68k~Amiga,PPC~CHRP} -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Renaud Dreyer]

>
> On 1/3/00 8:28 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
> inspired to say:
>
> >
> >On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, John L Grantham wrote:
> >
> >> On 1/3/00 6:17 pm, David A. Gatwood at dgatwood@deepspace.mklinux.org was
> >> inspired to say:
> >>
> >> >
> >> >On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Info wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> I need to buy a workstation for Linux development (C++,JAVA,PERL,etc)
> >> >> and would like to buy a Mac instead of Wintel.
> >> >>
> >> >> -Is LinuxPPC 2000 on par with RedHat 6.1?
> >> >
> >> >That's what all the PPC Linux distros are based on, yes.
> >>
> >> <nitpick>Not Debian...</nitpick>
> >
> >Is the Debian distribution a working distribution now?  I'd gotten the
> >impression that it was still a work-in-progress.
>
> Define "working". :-)
>
> Seriously, my impression (admittedly I haven't tried Debian yet, though I
> have no pressing need to do so--even though I would like to try out
> apt-get...) is that it's working, but still officially in beta.

It's working great right now on my PowerMac 7300. The installation
was a breeze (it might be a bit more complicated if you have a newer
machine though) and it's really nice to have a system that more or
less upgrades itself, and is pretty much on par with the Intel
(and Sparc, and m68k, and Alpha and...) distribution.

> Statement from Debian: "Debian/PowerPC is considered to be stable as of
> February, 1998, and is currently being consolidated for release. More
> than 90% of the Debian packages are available, with the remaining
> packages being processed. Debian/PowerPC will be officially released with
> the next version of Debian (2.2; code-named potato)."

Potato has been frozen and should be officially released very soon.
Ciao,

            Renaud


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Bill Brooks]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, David A. Gatwood wrote:

> > -Other than recompiling on wintel for delivery, can anyone see
> > potential problems with using LinuxPPC in a RedHat shop?
> > -Any known problems with JAVA tools (JDK, JSDK, Tomcat)?
>
> You mean taking LinuxPPC and trying to rebuild it on x86?  Good luck.  The
> words source compatible tend to be somewhat exaggerated when it comes to
> real-world use, especially where RPMs are involved.  Just MHO.

Reading the last bullet point, I think the poster was asking about
developing something in Java.

I personally have been using the Blackdown JDK 1.2.x tools on LinuxPPC
since they were released and have never had a problem moving Java source
OR binaries between JDK 1.2/Blackdown/LinuxPPC and JDK
1.2/Blackdown/RedHat5.2 - 6.1. I've been using Tomcat and Sun JSDK 2.0
since the first milestone drop and haven't ever had a problem that's not
reproducible on RedHat for x86. As far as I can tell, they are bug
compatible :-)

You'll have a harder time finding .rpm's for Tomcat, etc for PPC, but
that's not going to really stop you from doing Java development on
LinuxPPC in a RedHat shop at all.

Bill


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: LinuxPPC vs. RedHat???

[Tony Mantler]

At 1:28 PM -0600 3/1/2000, David A. Gatwood wrote:
>On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, John L Grantham wrote:
>
[...]
>> <nitpick>Not Debian...</nitpick>
>
>Is the Debian distribution a working distribution now?  I'd gotten the
>impression that it was still a work-in-progress.

A little while back I went about the proscess of converting my friend's
7600 and PBG3 to Linux. He chose LinuxPPC for the 7600, and I went for
Debian on his PBG3, since I had worked with it a lot in my 68k and
subsequent x86 dealings.

This was before Debian's installer had PowerMac support (which may still be
the case, I haven't checked), so installing the system manually was a bit
entertaining to say the least.

However, after all that was dealt with and the system was installed, it
proved to be (imho) a much better system than his LinuxPPC desktop system.
I never had to search for rpms, every package came with very sane, useable
default configuration files, and pretty much every package I've installed
on that box has worked first try, without any fussing or messing about.

No offense to the LinuxPPC guys here, :) but the difference has been enough
to convince him to get me to install Debian to replace LinuxPPC on his 7600
too.


Cheers - Tony :)


--
Tony Mantler         Renaissance Nerd Extraordinaire         eek@escape.ca
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada                       http://www.escape.ca/~eek


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/