Loveland, Colorado -- 9 March 2005 -- Terra Soft Solutions(R), Inc., the leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions, is pleased to announce support for bootable iPods and FireWire drives, both immediately available from Terra Soft with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed.
A bootable iPod or FireWire drive contains a full installation of Yellow Dog Linux which can be used as an external, bootable drive. All applications, data, and /home directory information is contained in this palm-sized medium, offering an unprecedented level of portability as users can boot G4 and G5 Apple computers from the iPod or FireWire drive, leaving internal drives untouched.
Bill Mueller, Terra Soft software engineer states, "While the goal of this project was to simply enable bootable FireWire, I took it one step further and incorporated Anaconda, a patched 'parted', and a clever partition resize tool. I just couldn't put the project down. I wanted to be able to install directly to my iPod from the Yellow Dog Install CDs ... now you can do just that."
Terra Soft has created a hybrid Yellow Dog Linux v4.0.1 #1 Install CD that incorporates the changes required to install to an iPod or FireWire drive from the graphical installer. This hybrid is immediately available through YDL.net Enhanced accounts at www.ydl.net.
"Since the day Apple first incorporated FireWire support we have been asked to enable Yellow Dog to install to a FireWire drive. While we would have gladly made this happen sooner, it was in fact a substantial challenge not easily completed. Now complete, no longer does one need to reformat an internal drive, reinstall OSX, and then Yellow Dog. With bootable external devices or the ability to resize an internal drive without reformat, Yellow Dog Linux just became a far more flexible, even more powerful OS," offers Kai Staats, co-founder & CEO.
Now available from the Terra Soft on-line Store are iPods and LaCie brand external FireWire drives with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed.
Staats continues, "Consider an iPod or pocket FireWire drive the most portable Linux workstation in the world. If there are Macs at your destination, you need only bring your drive and cable, reboot the borrowed computer, hold the Option key, and go. It's simple. It's fast. And it just works."
Terra Soft thanks Bill Fink for his original work that laid the foundation for bootable PowerPC Linux FireWire drives, and Guillaume Knispel for the partition resize tool which became integral in this solution.
About Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
Terra Soft is a leading Integrated Solutions Provider with proven expertise in the PowerPC architecture and Linux OS platform. As an Apple Authorized Proprietary Solutions Provider and IBM Business Partner, Terra Soft provides turnkey and build-to-order portables, desktop workstations, application and network servers, and HPC clusters. Terra Soft's Y-HPC 64-bit OS and cluster construction suite is widely accepted as the preferred platform for Xserve clusters.
For more information, visit www.terrasoftsolutions.com
IBM and PowerPC are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Apple and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.
