Lionel Élie Mamane wrote on 03/21/23:
On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 02:43:44AM +0000, Edward Robbins wrote:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2023 at 23:36, Lionel Élie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu>
wrote:
No candidate laptops I presume?
There is perhaps some day, this project is making slow but steady
progress. Looks like it may be crazy expensive in the end though
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/
Thanks for the link, interesting and I didn't know about this one
indeed. Beyond "not available this year", I see the one-but least FAQ
https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/faq/
says that it won't run a "modern distro" in little-endian mode, as
"although it does support LE, modern distros require some
functionality that are not available to this CPU".
And Debian's only 64 bit Power port seems to be... little endian? Big
endian is not even listed on https://www.debian.org/ports/ as being in
progress, it is not there at all.
With everywhere devs stating that BE is dead, and dropping support for
older architectures like Itanium with the hint that nobody uses it
anyhow and that it would only bind resources for no reason, it was also
my personal perception that PowerPC BE has no future.
I was looking at those projects in the past, but there are two problems:
1. They are way too expensive in terms of a performance to price ratio.
2. They are getting way too less support to make that extra investment
worthwhile.
With the one exception of the Raptor POWER10 systems maybe, but they are
quite expensive as well.
For me, as a private Linux user (not programmer, not developer, not
using those systems commercially in any way), it would "merely" be an
ideological decision. For now I'm on PC systems (desktops, laptops) with
Windows preinstalled, and I get very well supported Linux systems at a
reasonable price. In the past I also used Apple systems, which were
sometimes a little more expensive than their respective PC counterparts,
but back then the prices for, say, a Power Mac G4, were not that
astronomical than they are today with, say, an iMac Pro or a Mac Pro.
The only affordable Mac would be a Mac mini, but that one is no longer
expandable in any way, and it is full of proprietary Apple stuff as
well, starting with the Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) based boot
process.[1][2]
I would love to see a competitive truly open Linux computer, starting
with alternative (if not open) processor designs (Power/PowerPC, MIPS,
Arm, RISC-V), along with open source firmware (e.g. Coreboot) and ending
with full Linux support. But I would even consider an x86 system, as
long as it isn't overpriced and old, like the Libreboot project.[3] Or
IMHO also like the Librem. If it were AMD Zen 3 based, I'd probably have
bought it. But 10th Gen Intel Core i? No, thank you. Also, especially
with Laptops, it's also much about taste... and style... and
"feeling"... I like my Lenovo Legion more, and traditionally always had
something like a ThinkPad, because I like its style the most (the
keyboard, the three mouse buttons -- which sadly the Legion doesn't
have).
For a desktop I would be happy if the motherboard were some standard,
like ATX, so it could fit in any compatible desktop case.
The Raptor however was always way above my margin of what I can
afford.[4]
One thing though, and maybe someone can clarify for me: Why is it
software-wise not possible to emulate an LE system on top of a BE
system? The (Linux) kernel should be able to emulate being LE on BE
hardware, shouldn't it?
(E.g. I know of, but have never used, patched Mac OS X kernels, XNU,
with SSSE3 emulation, i.e. the kernel will provide SSSE3 support even
though the CPU running on doesn't have SSSE3.)
Would a live BE<->LE translation be so different? I'd rather have a
slower but working emulated LE system than a in theory faster BE system
with constant problems, like the one mentioned in Firefox.[5]
Thanks.
Linux User #330250
[1] https://asahilinux.org/about/
[2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/security/sec59b0b31ff/web
[3] https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/
[4] https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html
[5] https://www.talospace.com/2023/02/firefox-110-on-power.html