Re: Something that we don't want to happen to PowerPC on Debian
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:39:41 -0700
> Von: Brian Morris <cymraegish@gmail.com>
> An: debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org
> Betreff: Re: Something that we don\'t want to happen to PowerPC on Debian
> I believe perhaps the greatest factor is are new products being made and
> expected in the near future.
...
> although some or most of these industrial applications appear to be
> running VME or some such non Linux OS, I believe that there is
> certainly future potential for Linux especially in the aftermarket or
> smaller manufacturers with tighter margins (perhaps the new commercial
> space ventures who knows).
Besides some industrial PPC applications there is still PPC hardware
being developed for normal desktop users. A good example are the Sam440
and Sam460 boards from ACube Systems Srl. (with AMCC 440/460 cpus) or
the yet to be released AmigaOne X1000 with a dual-core PA6T cpu. All
these machines were (mostly) development for AmigaOS and are very
expensive (compared to normal PC hardware - IIRC a motherboard costs
around 600 to 800€), but I'm sure a lot Amiga users will also run Linux
(hopefully Debian) on these machines.
> another thing to possible speak of is the wonderfully improved support
> for auto-vectorizing of altivec in recent versions of gcc. It would be a
> terrible thing to waste this. But the port needs to somehow back it.
> Debian being something of a behemoth, it is a wild hope that there would
> be good support to simply user custom build systems such as altivec
> optimizing.
I also have libfreevec running on my AmigaOneXE (7455 cpu). This machine
is quite slow under GNOME, so any speed improvement is more than welcome.
However DRM (hardware graphics acceleration) is unusable on it, which is
even a bigger pain. :-(
> Another major major factor is is there (documented) plenty new blood of
> developers and users in Debian for the port.
I'm trying to adapt the Debian installer for my AmigaOne and possibly
also for the Sam440/460 boards. I have a rough plan for what needs to
be changed, but utterly failed so far to even adapt the linux-2.6
source package for these platforms.
...
>
> Brian
>
> p.s. I am shopping for a development board for my research in autonomous
> systems, and wouldn't it be nice to have powerpc ? but affordability is > an issue and also community software support -- it is leaning strongly
> toward ARM.
>
> any suggestions here ? The price / performance ratio is important.
>
>
>
> 2011/4/13 Rogério Brito <rbrito@ime.usp.br>
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA384
> >
> > Dear people,
> >
> > I know that this is probably not as serious for PowerPC as it was for
> > some other platforms, but it was, in my opinion, very sad to know that
> > Debian has dropped support for 2 architectures: alpha and hppa.
> >
> > For some personal reasons, I felt particularly sad about alpha (I
> > planned to buy one used machine for my own use), but, now, I sincerely
> > hope that people more knowledgeable about the architecture reintroduce
> > them as official ports of Debian again.
> >
> > As I would really hate to see these things happen to PowerPC, would
> > other people join me in collecting data for a future requalification
> > of PowerPC as a release architecture in Debian? Previous
> > qualification/certification data are available in:
> >
> > http://wiki.debian.org/powerpcEtchReleaseRecertification
> >
> > http://wiki.debian.org/powerpcLennyReleaseRecertification
> >
> > I know that this may sound a bit premature at this stage, but it is
> > better if we, as a whole, report the errors as early as possible (and,
> > for those that can, provide a few patches), so that ppc is as healthy
> > as feasible and not in any danger of being dropped out.
> >
> > For those that didn't know about alpha and hppa being dropped from
> > Debian, please read this:
> >
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2011/04/msg00000.html
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > - --
> > Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 4096R/BCFCAAAA
Good to see that someone is taking care of the Debian PPC port.
Keep up the good work!
best regards,
Gerhard
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