Re: Mozilla Software on Sparc64/Linux
Connor
This thread below claims that Big-Endian is dead (2015). It says that
IBM changed their PowerPC's from BE to LE. Also that web developers
assume LE.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451284
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16187939#:~:text=Big%20endian%20is%20dead%20on%20the%20client.&text=Big%20endian%20will%20stay%20alive,time%20on%20IBM%20z%20systems.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3467gq/bigendian_is_effectively_dead/
It ticks me off because I like BE better. And one of the most common
architectures, ARM, is switchable between BE and LE. It is normally used
as LE, but that is not stopping you.
Adrian explained the problem in Firefox a while ago, it was complex.
The words of Linus:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/4/24/606
Linux Plumbers Congress 2020:
https://lwn.net/Articles/829733/
Is it a lost cause? Rephrase that: how many of us want and need to
scratch the itch?
cheers -- Rick
On 11/6/21 12:05 PM, Connor McLaughlan wrote:
Hello All,
i would be very interested in getting Firefox and Thunderbird (and
possibly Seamonkey, but this isn't available at all with debian it
seam) running, if possible at all for the newer versions.
I would be willing to file error reports and produce gdb output on
crashes, if this would help and someone could direct me to information
on how and where to do it for debian.
I have a few Sparc64 machines (Ultra45, Blade100, Ultra10, T1000,
V120) to test.
What i can get running (but also with errors) are only to following
two versions:
firefox_50.1.0-1_sparc64.deb
thunderbird_52.9.1-1_sparc64.deb
All later packages crash with bus errors.
But as the latest versions for Sparc64 are well behind the releases on
the other architectures, would debian even accept bug reports for
older packages? (eg. firefox-esr 78 x86_64 vs. firefox-esr 60 sparc64)
Rust seems not to be an issue any more for sparc64/linux, but the
general upstream neglect of sparc64 seems to be the major problem.
I would like to hear opinions on how to proceed or if you think this
is a lost cause?
Regards,
Connor
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