Run Yellow Dog Linux On A PowerPC PC Not Built By Apple

by , 7:00 AM EDT, August 16th, 2001

We seem to have missed this when it was announced at MACWORLD, but we see it now and think it's very interesting. Terra Soft Solutions has dropped the price on it 500 MHz briQ PowerPC Linux computers. You read correctly, the company has a line of specialized G4 and G3 computers it is building that runs Yellow Dog Linux. The units are small, built to be included in a rack and can be clustered together. From Terra Soft:

Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., leading developer of PowerPC Linux technologies and provider of high density, PowerPC G4 computers today announced a drastic reduction in price of the 500 MHz briQ.

"Since the introduction of the 'Yellow briQ Node' three weeks ago at MacWorld NY, we have listened intently to the feedback of our potential customers. Across the board, the briQ's performance, low power consumption, and high density form-factor have been well received. Only the price stood in the way of immediate introduction into several HPC facilities, server environments, offices, and school labs. Today we have removed that barrier," states Kai Staats, CEO Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.

The ultimate PowerPC Linux compute node, the 500 MHz G4 briQ is now priced at just $1959 with 512 MB RAM and YDL 2.0 pre-installed. Formerly $28,000, pre-configured 8 node clusters are now just $17,819. Both individual briQs and fully configured clusters are available from the Terra Soft online Store:

Click the image above for a larger version

briQ Towers

You can find more information on the briQ at Terra Soft's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

We wish we had noticed these machines when they were announced, but we are glad we noticed them with the price decrease. This is a very cool Linux box, and one that will hopefully broaden the market share of the PowerPC processor in the PC industry, though it would an enormous amount of units for that to happen. In any event, it offers Motorola and/or IBM one more outlet for PowerPC processors in that space, and that will hopefully encourage more R&D. We would also like to note that this is exactly the sort of server oriented box that we wish Apple itself would ship.

Terra Soft Solutions