Terra Soft Releases New Yellow Dog Linux

The company generally issues a new YDL release or major update twice yearly. This new version followed the initial release of version 3.0 by a little over a year.

Commenting on the release, lead developer Owen Stampflee said, "Finally."

A Bit More Work To Do

Terra Soft attributed the longer time between releases in this case to the shift from the Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) Linux code base to the new Fedora code base.

"This was a complete rewrite under the Fedora distribution," CEO Kai Staats said.

The final version should be available soon. "We have around 15 beta testers running it on 30 or so systems," Staats said.

Attracting PowerPC Adopters?

David Mertz, an independent writer and researcher, does not believe the new version of Yellow Dog Linux by itself will drive increased adoption of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) G5 line. But he did tell MacNewsWorld that use of Apple hardware is a smart choice.

"If you go to conferences, you'll find that the smarter and more technical the people are, the more likely they are to carry PowerBooks or iBooks as opposed to x86 laptops." The term x86 refers to machines running Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) processors.

Mertz thinks developers will adopt Apple not because of the technical merits of the PowerPC instruction set but because Apple laptops have the best form factor, weight and battery life.

"But indirectly, that [encourages] more interest in P[ower]PC as a chip family, which I think is generally good," Mertz added.

Tech Specs

The new Yellow Dog Linux version 4.0 includes both KDE 3.2.2 and GNOME 2.6.0 desktops. The company has revamped the graphical installer and desktop appearance.

Applications bundled include OpenOffice 1.1.1, Rhythmbox 0.8.3 for audio, the popular Web browser Mozilla 1.6 and development tools glibc 2.3.3 and gcc 3.3.3 built upon the 32-bit kernel 2.6.7.

Terra Soft supports the new version on G3 iBooks, Blue & Whites and iMacs; G4 PowerBooks and Power Macs; and G5 Power Macs. Staats said that beige G3s should be able to run YDL, but Terra Soft will not support those systems.

Strong Market, Strong Growth

Founded in 1999, Terra Soft Solutions set out to become the leading provider of Linux on PowerPC. The company has become an IBM (NYSE: IBM) Business Partner and an Apple Authorized reseller.

Terra Soft sells Apple and IBM hardware through its online store. All Apple desktops, notebooks and servers come preloaded with Yellow Dog Linux and OS X. The company also plans to release Y-HPC, a PowerPC Linux release supporting 64-bit systems. It currently ships a hybrid YDL 4/64-bit distribution loaded on all G5 Xserves and Xserve Cluster Nodes it sells.

Staats said Terra Soft is one of the top five Apple resellers in the United States.

"For sales of Apple servers, we are first in the U.S. Our sales are twice what they were 12 to 18 months ago overall," Staats said. "We are in the top five for [value-added resellers] overall."