Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Hi All!
Did anything ever come of this? What can we do to make it happen? now that the
holidays are over and we each have a little more free time…
Rick
On Nov 20, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rogério Brito rbr...@ime.usp.br wrote:
Dear people,
Motivated by:
* the results of the last call to porters
* the fact that PowerPC (at least) used to be an architecture where Debian
shined
* the lack of external support (which means that we should help ourselves)
* the documentation that is too spread
* the need of architecture-specific tools (pbbuttonsd? mouseemu?
gtkpbbutons? anything that needs to be revived? yahoot? grub2?)
I thought: perhaps are people out there that may be interested in shaping up
the powerpc port of Debian?
In fact, since:
* Ubuntu doesn't offer an official PowerPC release anymore.
* Apple has long given up updating the operating system for PowerPC users.
* Major projects like Chromium/v8/nodejs are not available for PowerPC.
* Firefox for PowerPC is essentially dead as far as Mozilla is concerned,
with only a very bright enthusiast working on building it with JavaScript
acceleration (http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/),
we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else be
interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have?
It would be super nice to work on having the installs as good as possible
(meaning: working with as little fiddling as possible after a fresh
install), integrating intelligence about snd-aoa, snd-powermac etc. in
debian-installer, making the 3D thing work as well as feasible,
automatically suggesting programs (alas, even firmware) that are of use for
a powerpc user?
What about this idea?
Perhaps we can already grab/compile the resources that others have already
kept (say, the Gentoo pages, which are very good, the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ,
which is another very good resource), an old document that I, a long time
ago, started writing at https://github.com/rbrito/powerpc-tutorial etc.
Of course, having both the document for those people that want to know how
things are done and having the code that just works is the golden goal...
Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only
commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full
already.
Thanks,
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFC
http://cynic.cc/blog/ : github.com/rbrito : profiles.google.com/rbrito
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Hi
I spent some time, to learn about automatic build of packages.
Target was to try to recompile with newer GCC.
Not much progress however...
Gasha
On 01/14/2014 12:16 PM, Rick Thomas wrote:
Hi All!
Did anything ever come of this? What can we do to make it happen? now that the
holidays are over and we each have a little more free time…
Rick
On Nov 20, 2013, at 9:07 PM, Rogério Britorbr...@ime.usp.br wrote:
Dear people,
Motivated by:
* the results of the last call to porters
* the fact that PowerPC (at least) used to be an architecture where Debian
shined
* the lack of external support (which means that we should help ourselves)
* the documentation that is too spread
* the need of architecture-specific tools (pbbuttonsd? mouseemu?
gtkpbbutons? anything that needs to be revived? yahoot? grub2?)
I thought: perhaps are people out there that may be interested in shaping up
the powerpc port of Debian?
In fact, since:
* Ubuntu doesn't offer an official PowerPC release anymore.
* Apple has long given up updating the operating system for PowerPC users.
* Major projects like Chromium/v8/nodejs are not available for PowerPC.
* Firefox for PowerPC is essentially dead as far as Mozilla is concerned,
with only a very bright enthusiast working on building it with JavaScript
acceleration (http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/),
we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else be
interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have?
It would be super nice to work on having the installs as good as possible
(meaning: working with as little fiddling as possible after a fresh
install), integrating intelligence about snd-aoa, snd-powermac etc. in
debian-installer, making the 3D thing work as well as feasible,
automatically suggesting programs (alas, even firmware) that are of use for
a powerpc user?
What about this idea?
Perhaps we can already grab/compile the resources that others have already
kept (say, the Gentoo pages, which are very good, the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ,
which is another very good resource), an old document that I, a long time
ago, started writing at https://github.com/rbrito/powerpc-tutorial etc.
Of course, having both the document for those people that want to know how
things are done and having the code that just works is the golden goal...
Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only
commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full
already.
Thanks,
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFC
http://cynic.cc/blog/ : github.com/rbrito : profiles.google.com/rbrito
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Hi, Rick Thomas wrote: Hi All! Did anything ever come of this? What can we do to make it happen? now that the holidays are over and we each have a little more free time… Rick I missed that message! I love PPC and I am still very sad it is getting, along with MIPS; a second-level platform with x86 and ARM now having the dominance. I use PPC on two iBooks one with MacOS with Debian, on two iBooks, to check that all thw GNUstep software I am involved with works on that wonderful platform. I veryfy compilation natively and then on Debian+GNUstep. There are, however, lots of difficulties! People code less and less for big-endian platforms and for non-x86 as you write lots of stuff breaks. X currently for me is in bad shape: the driver is crashing with cairo (I hope the patch gets into debian soon) and I have skewed colors. I can survive by exporting X and testing stuff this way, but it is again a proof of this uphill battle. a lot of work goes beyond debian, it goes in fixes that would benefit also BSD and others, since they are fixes in the userland! I'm not using them currently, but I would have available an older 9600 running NetBSD, which always had SCSI problems, and 9500 which had a G4 card which I never got running full speed and I don't remember which OS it was running. I could dust them off :) GNUstep stuff is a good candiate, since it is quite designed to be corss-platform and most developers, not just me, are receptive about platform compatibility. However Debian is our worst-packaged distribution... so well, not brightnews. Riccardo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52d56219.8030...@libero.it
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
I would be willing to help out with some task like organizing the documentation and/or translations; of course also testing packages on the user end as needed. I like the idea of a top organizational mastermind making some task sub- teams; and I'm willing to head-up 1-2 things appointed to me. I've read through a lot of what's out there, including Rogérto's work on Grub2, etc. I would also like to suggest the ppc task force includes right at the top of any pages or docs a list of the most reccomended by the team, power pc systems to use.. I realized after reading Lennart's e-mail that I had no idea that ppc was so widely used. [ side question, what is the favorite non-apple powerpc laptop of somebodies ? If I go pick up a low-cost used or discontinud laptop ] All the Best JB On Thursday 21 November 2013 15:16:07 Lennart Sorensen wrote: On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 03:07:39AM -0200, Rogério Brito wrote: Dear people, Motivated by: * the results of the last call to porters * the fact that PowerPC (at least) used to be an architecture where Debian shined * the lack of external support (which means that we should help ourselves) * the documentation that is too spread * the need of architecture-specific tools (pbbuttonsd? mouseemu? gtkpbbutons? anything that needs to be revived? yahoot? grub2?) grub2 upstream at least is working quite well on powerpc. I have been using it on power6 and power7 systems for 3 or 4 years now. I would assume the *button* things are powermac related given I hadn't heard of them before. I thought: perhaps are people out there that may be interested in shaping up the powerpc port of Debian? In fact, since: * Ubuntu doesn't offer an official PowerPC release anymore. * Apple has long given up updating the operating system for PowerPC users. * Major projects like Chromium/v8/nodejs are not available for PowerPC. * Firefox for PowerPC is essentially dead as far as Mozilla is concerned, with only a very bright enthusiast working on building it with JavaScript acceleration (http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/), we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else be interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have? It would be super nice to work on having the installs as good as possible (meaning: working with as little fiddling as possible after a fresh install), integrating intelligence about snd-aoa, snd-powermac etc. in debian-installer, making the 3D thing work as well as feasible, automatically suggesting programs (alas, even firmware) that are of use for a powerpc user? So on which systems are you thinking? Old powermacs or modern IBM pSeries? What about this idea? Perhaps we can already grab/compile the resources that others have already kept (say, the Gentoo pages, which are very good, the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ, which is another very good resource), an old document that I, a long time ago, started writing at https://github.com/rbrito/powerpc-tutorial etc. Of course, having both the document for those people that want to know how things are done and having the code that just works is the golden goal... Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full already. I think other than the installer needing a bit of work to know the correct partition setup to use on IBM powerpc systems (as far as I recall wheezy still doesn't quite do the right thing, although it has been a while since I did a new install), and making it install grub2 properly on systems where that is a better choice, it actually works quite well out of the box these days.A Certainly for a while yaboot was hopelessly out of date which made the IBM systems impossible to use it on, and grub2 wasn't good enough for it yet. I think yaboot is now new enough to work, and grub2 is working quite well too. I have no experience with the powermacs and other than the dual G5s, they are just so hopelessly slow and outdated that I can't imagine really bothering with them. complete original thread: On Thursday 21 November 2013 06:07:39 Rogério Brito wrote: Dear people, Motivated by: * the results of the last call to porters * the fact that PowerPC (at least) used to be an architecture where Debian shined * the lack of external support (which means that we should help ourselves) * the documentation that is too spread * the need of architecture-specific tools (pbbuttonsd? mouseemu? gtkpbbutons? anything that needs to be revived? yahoot? grub2?) I thought: perhaps are people out there that may be interested in shaping up the powerpc port of Debian? In fact, since: * Ubuntu doesn't offer an official PowerPC release anymore. * Apple has long given up updating the operating system for PowerPC
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Erik de Castro Lopo writes: Rogério Brito wrote: Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full already. I'm interested in contributing. While I am an experienced developer (mostly user space, C, C++, Python Ocaml, Haskell etc and some linux kernel and device driver stuff a long time ago) I am rather short on spare time. Interesting idea. I am rather short on spare time, but a goal could help me organizing it a bit better. -- /\ ___Ubuntu: ancient /___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_ African word //--\| | \| | Integralista GNUslamicomeaning I can \/ coltivatore diretto di software not install già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...Debian Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/21133.47290.89429.249...@mail.eng.it
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Hello, we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else be interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have? Note that there are PPC users out there you might don't think of. Two companies (links below) build PPC hardware primarily targeting AmigaOS users but we are also interested by Linux. It means that we are also helping keeping the PPC world alive. What I wanted to say is that your work is not wasted and it's appreciated. We also helped by adding hardware support in the kernel tree. One thing that would require more work is the support of the Uboot firmware + Parthenope boot loader. It seems that everybody thinks the PPC world uses OpenFirmware + yaboot :-/ About AmigaOS: http://www.amigaos.net ACube Systems: http://www.acube-systems.biz/ Aeon Technology: http://a-eon.com/ Latest activity on PPC kernels: http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6206forum=10 --Philippe Ferrucci
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 03:07:39AM -0200, Rogério Brito wrote: Dear people, Motivated by: * the results of the last call to porters * the fact that PowerPC (at least) used to be an architecture where Debian shined * the lack of external support (which means that we should help ourselves) * the documentation that is too spread * the need of architecture-specific tools (pbbuttonsd? mouseemu? gtkpbbutons? anything that needs to be revived? yahoot? grub2?) grub2 upstream at least is working quite well on powerpc. I have been using it on power6 and power7 systems for 3 or 4 years now. I would assume the *button* things are powermac related given I hadn't heard of them before. I thought: perhaps are people out there that may be interested in shaping up the powerpc port of Debian? In fact, since: * Ubuntu doesn't offer an official PowerPC release anymore. * Apple has long given up updating the operating system for PowerPC users. * Major projects like Chromium/v8/nodejs are not available for PowerPC. * Firefox for PowerPC is essentially dead as far as Mozilla is concerned, with only a very bright enthusiast working on building it with JavaScript acceleration (http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/), we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else be interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have? It would be super nice to work on having the installs as good as possible (meaning: working with as little fiddling as possible after a fresh install), integrating intelligence about snd-aoa, snd-powermac etc. in debian-installer, making the 3D thing work as well as feasible, automatically suggesting programs (alas, even firmware) that are of use for a powerpc user? So on which systems are you thinking? Old powermacs or modern IBM pSeries? What about this idea? Perhaps we can already grab/compile the resources that others have already kept (say, the Gentoo pages, which are very good, the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ, which is another very good resource), an old document that I, a long time ago, started writing at https://github.com/rbrito/powerpc-tutorial etc. Of course, having both the document for those people that want to know how things are done and having the code that just works is the golden goal... Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full already. I think other than the installer needing a bit of work to know the correct partition setup to use on IBM powerpc systems (as far as I recall wheezy still doesn't quite do the right thing, although it has been a while since I did a new install), and making it install grub2 properly on systems where that is a better choice, it actually works quite well out of the box these days.A Certainly for a while yaboot was hopelessly out of date which made the IBM systems impossible to use it on, and grub2 wasn't good enough for it yet. I think yaboot is now new enough to work, and grub2 is working quite well too. I have no experience with the powermacs and other than the dual G5s, they are just so hopelessly slow and outdated that I can't imagine really bothering with them. -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131121141607.ga20...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
On Nov 21, 2013, at 7:15 AM, Risto Suominen risto.suomi...@gmail.com wrote: Good idea, Rogério! I've been working with powermac sound drivers, and could contribute at least in that area: automatic detection of sound hardware during the installation. Plus testing, I still own quite many old powermacs. Risto I can also help with testing. Like Risto, I also have a sizable collection of old PowerPC Macs. G3, G4 and G5 (single and dual core) including even an OldWorld Beige G3. I'd love to help out! Rick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/bfabeb5e-3c49-4d63-825b-a2654232d...@pobox.com
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 09:16:07 -0500 Lennart Sorensen lsore...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca wrote: I think other than the installer needing a bit of work to know the correct partition setup to use on IBM powerpc systems (as far as I recall wheezy still doesn't quite do the right thing, although it has been a while since I did a new install), and making it install grub2 properly on systems where that is a better choice, it actually works quite well out of the box these days.A I'd go as far as to propose it for usage as default, I've replaced yaboot on my trusty 12 powerbook G4 and it works flawlessly. I have no experience with the powermacs and other than the dual G5s, they are just so hopelessly slow and outdated that I can't imagine really bothering with them. I have a couple of PowerPC systems here, that I currently use and have brought back to life -an original Efika MPC5200-based, a Powerbook G4 12 which I have upgraded with an SATA SSD and is now much faster than before (using a 2.5 - 1.8 SATA adapter, in fact I'm planning to write a howto about this soon, total cost €55!), and a Pegasos II which unfortunately due to a buggy firmware can't see more than 1GB and even that with timing errors, leading to memory corruption problems. So, 2 ppc32 systems. I'd be very interested to contribute to anything that would involve Altivec as that's one of my favourite SIMD engines still -along with ARM NEON. I might be more into ARM these days, but PowerPC is my favourite architecture no doubt, and the one that got me into Linux and Debian in the first place! I would gladly help to keep it well supported. Regards Konstantinos pgpEuojoptfHO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Good idea, Rogério! I've been working with powermac sound drivers, and could contribute at least in that area: automatic detection of sound hardware during the installation. Plus testing, I still own quite many old powermacs. Risto -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cacyrqa0aww5tabagj2wv_ebcax17zxilh8f5t24zzn8escz...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Hi there, Yes, that's right, there are new PPC hardware. Look at the following pages: http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de/amiga/x1000.html http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de/amiga/sam.html http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewforum.php?f=35 http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewforum.php?f=52 These pages offer new kernels and distributions for the A-EON AmigaOne X1000, for the ACube Sam440ep-flex, and for the ACube Sam460ex. Additional is an optimal version of SuperTuxKart 0.8/0.8.1 for Linux ppc with AltiVec available: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewtopic.php?f=35t=2074 http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewtopic.php?f=35t=1845 Rgds, Christian Hello, we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else be interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have? Note that there are PPC users out there you might don't think of. Two companies (links below) build PPC hardware primarily targeting AmigaOS users but we are also interested by Linux. It means that we are also helping keeping the PPC world alive. What I wanted to say is that your work is not wasted and it's appreciated. We also helped by adding hardware support in the kernel tree. One thing that would require more work is the support of the Uboot firmware + Parthenope boot loader. It seems that everybody thinks the PPC world uses OpenFirmware + yaboot :-/ About AmigaOS: http://www.amigaos.net ACube Systems: http://www.acube-systems.biz/ Aeon Technology: http://a-eon.com/ Latest activity on PPC kernels: http://www.amigans.net/modules/xforum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6206forum=10 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/528dfd1e.8000...@xenosoft.de
Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Hi,
I would be interested in helping out. I don't have a significant amount of
experience with software development, but I do have a good selection of
PowerPC hardware and several years of experience with Debian.
Logan Brown
On Nov 21, 2013 12:24 AM, Rogério Brito rbr...@ime.usp.br wrote:
Dear people,
Motivated by:
* the results of the last call to porters
* the fact that PowerPC (at least) used to be an architecture where Debian
shined
* the lack of external support (which means that we should help ourselves)
* the documentation that is too spread
* the need of architecture-specific tools (pbbuttonsd? mouseemu?
gtkpbbutons? anything that needs to be revived? yahoot? grub2?)
I thought: perhaps are people out there that may be interested in shaping
up
the powerpc port of Debian?
In fact, since:
* Ubuntu doesn't offer an official PowerPC release anymore.
* Apple has long given up updating the operating system for PowerPC users.
* Major projects like Chromium/v8/nodejs are not available for PowerPC.
* Firefox for PowerPC is essentially dead as far as Mozilla is concerned,
with only a very bright enthusiast working on building it with JavaScript
acceleration (http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/),
we are essentially orphans of the architecture. Again, would anybody else
be
interested in addressing the current problems that PowerPC seems to have?
It would be super nice to work on having the installs as good as possible
(meaning: working with as little fiddling as possible after a fresh
install), integrating intelligence about snd-aoa, snd-powermac etc. in
debian-installer, making the 3D thing work as well as feasible,
automatically suggesting programs (alas, even firmware) that are of use for
a powerpc user?
What about this idea?
Perhaps we can already grab/compile the resources that others have already
kept (say, the Gentoo pages, which are very good, the Ubuntu PowerPC FAQ,
which is another very good resource), an old document that I, a long time
ago, started writing at https://github.com/rbrito/powerpc-tutorial etc.
Of course, having both the document for those people that want to know how
things are done and having the code that just works is the golden goal...
Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only
commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full
already.
Thanks,
--
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFC
http://cynic.cc/blog/ : github.com/rbrito : profiles.google.com/rbrito
DebianQA: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=rbrito%40ime.usp.br
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Re: Creating a PowerPC task force?
Rogério Brito wrote: Please, let me know if you are interested in joining efforts. I will only commit efforts if I see other people contributing, as I have my hands full already. I'm interested in contributing. While I am an experienced developer (mostly user space, C, C++, Python Ocaml, Haskell etc and some linux kernel and device driver stuff a long time ago) I am rather short on spare time. Cheers, Erik -- -- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131121170003.d2a4843df881b4e73dbf6...@mega-nerd.com
