Re: Something that we don't want to happen to PowerPC on Debian
Can you keep us posted about these projects of yours, especially related
to the Sam460 board ?
Thanks
Jeroen
On Sun, 2011-04-17 at 19:55 +0200, Gerhard Pircher wrote:
> -------- 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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