[rescue] Mac Appliance

[Steve Pacenka]

> It wouldn't surprise me if at some point IBM starts to optimize that POWER
> port of linux, and I suspect that a lot of those optimizations would also
> help the regular PPC port.

That would be helpful, and lots of people besides the companies contribute to 
the Linux kernel.  Lesser perfomance on a PPC could be a critical mass issue.  
If there are enough LinuxPPC users then there probably will be some who have 
the skills and motivation to contribute to evolving the kernel port.  I've 
been surprised to see so many people writing and testing device drivers 
(mostly written in C), and it may be that the kernel's innards are pretty good 
now, but the disk and video drivers aren't very good.

The recently released YellowDog 2.0 distribution could attract new users.  A 
$200 rescued PowerMac (say a 5400/180) with Linux and OpenOffice is a 
constructive alternative to a new WinTel PC with MS Office.  (For that matter 
so is a rescued Sparc >=10 >=61.)

-- SP