Submitted by Here is an interview with Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco of Genesi, the company behind the PowerPC G4 Open Desktop Workstation. They talk about MorphOS, Java, the ODW, future plans for the ODW, and much more.
Here is an interview with Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco of Genesi, the company behind the PowerPC G4 Open Desktop Workstation. They talk about MorphOS, Java, the ODW, future plans for the ODW, and much more.
I would love to buy one, but, unfortunately, the Open Desktop Workstation is way more expensive than a Mac Mini, with weaker specifications.
I’m still debating whether to buy a mini or an ODW. The nice thing about the ODW is that is is completely supported. Last time I checked the mini’s audio system didn’t work, the wireless wasn’t supported and the displays were a pita to get working. The ODW on the other hand has DRI working out of the box, and allows you to put a TV card in it to make a passively cooled PVR box. The Mini requires a ton of external accessories to turn it in to a PVR box, assuming you get MythTV running on OS X.
I’m still debating whether to buy a mini or an ODW.
I have the luck that I’m getting an ODW for a review in the coming weeks, but even if I didn’t, I’d probably still have bought one. I like the fact that it can be passively cooled, is supported *out of the box* by many Linux distributions, and that via MOL, I can even run Mac OS X with acceptable speed (I already have a Mac, so that isn’t *really* nescesary).
In all it’s slickness, the Mac Mini is a rather bare and limited machine compared to the ODW.
Hope the review will have an extensive comparison with the Mini – and it would be interesting to get your view of a possible tradeoff with a Shuttle based system. Yes they are quite a bit bigger, and yes they have a fan (though mitigated by the heat pipe system) but they seem to offer quite a good compromise on price/performance/size. And of course you get OS flexibility too, though in the direction of Windows dual boot, instead of MOL.
Look forward to the review in any case.
The mac mini is not comparable to the Pegasos 2.
The Pegasos 2 compares better with a PowerMac G4 in term of expandability (You can put a faster gfx board or use up to 4 of them, DVB PCI cards, SCSI cards, SERIAL ATA + huge drives etc) while using a much smaller and quieter case setup (however not as small as the mini).
As of Ubuntu Breezy, audio is completely supported on the Mini.
An equal ODW requires you to re-mortage something very expensive.
“In all it’s slickness, the Mac Mini is a rather bare and limited machine compared to the ODW.”
As a Mini user that upgraded his ram to 1gb by hand and uses only Linux on it, every day, I can tell you with sound, full 2D/3D acceleration with FOSS DRI drivers, the mini is outstanding. Not what I would call “rather bare” at all.
Are these the same guys that screwed one of the BSD programmers?
Yes. See my comment here, though:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12161&comment_id=41898
Yes, they did screw over Dale Rahn of OpenBSD.
does not have a future
Thom, are you getting one with 1.4GHz or even 1.7GHz G4?
http://genesi.pegasosppc.com/press.php?date=20050907
Thom, are you getting one with 1.4GHz or even 1.7GHz G4?
I really don’t know, and quite frankly, I don’t care much either. As long as it works, I’ve never been interested in having the latest-and-greatest-and-fastest in the computing world. I’m OSNews’ James May
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_May ).
And for you people it’s only important if my computer can run Firefox/Safari so I can work on OSNews
.
Is it just me or could this guy use some media-training? He seems rather antagonistic and curt in his answers. That and the BSD debacle.
You’re right. I hope the future of big-endian platforms for mere mortals does not depend on Genesi. Or they hire some good management and PR stuff.
Yup, BB is certainly not one of the good guys. E.g. he is not able to visit France anymore, because he would be arrested due to criminal practices in the past…
What a bunch of crap…are you a blind Theo follower? Buck can’t come to France, but gets awarded the *French* National Order of Merit.
http://www.genesippc.com/press.php?date=20040524
The whole OpenBSD episode is posted online. I have read it. If Buck is so wrong where is the OpenBSD port? I don’t see it. There is two sides to that story.
looks like they will dump everything in favor for open solaris and linux
There is more to the story than simply “bbrv screwed Dale Rahn”
Who cares anyway.
Raquel and Bill are married and did live in France, maybe they still do ( http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2005/02/it-is-not-leap-year.html ), but they are now in Texas a lot (Freescale & IBM). I have worked with them for four years on and off, and I find no fault in them. They run a small company, a start up. They fund it themselves. They have had to make some hard decisions, especially about MorphOS, which is still important to them. I think they have a lot of charisma. Genesi won the Best of Show Award at the Freescale Technology Forum ( http://www.genesippc.com/press.php?date=20050624 ). Watch the video! They certainly took the “show” there!