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HPCwire >> Special Features >> SC08 >> SC08 Off the Wire

November 20, 2008

Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 Offers Advanced Cell Experience

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AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 19 -- From the show floor of Supercomputing 2008, booth #1915, Fixstars today released Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 for Apple G4/G5, Sony PLAYSTATION3, PowerStation, and IBM Power Systems. Built upon the CentOS foundation, a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, YDL v6.1 offers several end-user and development tool improvements over the previous v6.0.

"This marks the final release of Yellow Dog Linux by Terra Soft and the first by Fixstars," states Owen Stampflee, Fixstars Solutions' director of engineering, "In my five years with Terra Soft we have made incremental improvements with each release, always pressing for a higher quality end user experience. In some updates, we focus on the desktop; in others the development environment. With version 6.1 we have accomplished a unique blend of both. I am personally proud of what we offer with this version of Yellow Dog, and believe our users will enjoy it as well."

Satoshi Miki, Fixstars chief executive officer states, "We are proud to not only acquire and tightly integrate YDL into our product and service offerings, but to be a part of this particular release which intentionally addresses the needs of the Cell developer. Having been a YDL user for more than two years, to launch our first Fixstars' branded YDL distribution is a proud moment for my company."

For end users, Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 offers an updated Firefox and OpenOffice.org, a vastly improved graphical wireless configuration tool, and the introduction of ps3vram functionality which enables use of PS3 video RAM for temporary storage or swap.

For developers, v6.1 offers the latest stable kernel, an updated GCC, the open portion of the IBM Cell SDK v3.1, and through a working relationship with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, YDL v6.1 now ships with the new Cell Superscalar.

With the appearance of new multicore processor architectures, the Cell Broadband Engine included, there is a need for new programming paradigms. CellSs is a programming model that addresses the automatic exploitation of functional parallelism from a sequential application with annotations.

Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 supports:

  • Sony PS3.
  • Apple PowerPC G4, G5.
  • YDL PowerStation.
  • IBM System p (JS2x, 510, 520, 540).

Yellow Dog Linux v6.1 offers these updates over v6.0:

  • Kernel 2.6.27
  • GCC 4.1.2
  • Cell SDK 3.1
  • Firefox 3.0
  • OpenOffice 2.3 (v3.0 coming to YDL.net Enhanced soon!).
  • X.org 1.4.999 with xrandr 1.2.2
  • Dramatically improved, automated wireless config.
  • GUI configuration tool for YDL.net.
  • Bluetooth support for the PS3 Sixaxis controller.
  • Barcelona Supercomputing Center CellSs.
  • ps3vram for fast, temp file storage or swap using PS3 video RAM.

Users often state that YDL is the simplest to install of any distribution. Post-installation, the default applications are a makes-sense offering of the industry standards: Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email, Pidgin IM/IRC client, Ekiga voice over IP, OpenOffice, gThumb and GIMP, the Fluendo multimedia player installer, and a suite of personal accessories.

Learn more about the default installed applications.

Study the Tutorial for YDL and E17.

YDL v6.1 will be available by the close of today via YDL.net Enhanced accounts purchased at the Fixstars Store.

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