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 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,
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