Recent posts

#91

Media production to comunicate the project / Re: Let's vote for the name

Last post by robyinno - May 12, 2017, 04:29:26 PM

So do you want we add to the poll OpenPPCbooK ?

I think something like OpenPPCbooK would be ok. It does not embed any well known existing trademark. "Open" reflects the choices of the project to consider NDA-free and accessible hardware and software where practical but including components with more restrictions to achieve reasonable performance and features where necessary. So not truly "free hardware".

#92

Media production to comunicate the project / Re: Other more better names fo...

Last post by robyinno - May 12, 2017, 04:27:26 PM

The mobo will be designed with particular care to run  linux
Which name (one?) really do you want to add to the poll? 
Thanks

Well, as you may know, we do not have enough options for names.
Here are a few more better and more goodly names.
Power Bisquit
Gnew Sandwich Laptop
Cheese and Fries in Disguise
It's-my-laptop-so-you-better-give-it-to-me-because-just-because-okay
What have these nerds come up with now?
Oh, yeah? But does it run linux?

#93

Media production to comunicate the project / Re: Let's vote for the name

Last post by robyinno - May 12, 2017, 04:17:01 PM

added on the poll

I have a suggestion for a name. My suggestion is PowerPhoenix.

#94

Fine tuning/Optimization of applications/libraries for PowerPC / Re: Java?

Last post by msuchanek - May 11, 2017, 04:03:11 PM

There is also some sort of IBM JDK.

It is probably ppc64le only in recent versions, though.

#95

Fine tuning/Optimization of applications/libraries for PowerPC / Re: Real Flash support

Last post by msuchanek - May 11, 2017, 04:00:24 PM

I don't like flash either.

It was promising platform in the past and provided features that the web did not provide otherwise.

The web has caught up since so with very recent versions of 'major' web browsers you can get pretty much anything flash provides in html5 only.

Unfortunately, many websites have not caught up and still use flash for some major features meaning they will break without flash.

In particular youtube still requires flash to play back old low-res videos AFAICT.

I think the platform was killed by Macromedia not allowing alternative renderers. They tried to exert tight control over the platform which in the end bit them back. At certain point wintel+mac was no longer 99.999% of everything and an alternative renderer that was required for the platform to survive at least as a niche alternative was not there. Today you would not consider flash for new applications unless you use a framework that has it only as one of possible targets because you want to reach users. And most users are 'mobile' these days which means mostly flash-free.

Practically the Adobe blob or the Google build of the same is the only way to render flash content to date. So if you want flash consider x86 emulation.

#96

Fine tuning/Optimization of applications/libraries for PowerPC / Re: Browser situation

Last post by msuchanek - May 11, 2017, 03:46:45 PM

The maintainer and developer of TenFourFox is apparently a fantastic person, I guess contacting him for clarification wouldn't be a bad thing.

But as far as I know, he does all of his TenFourFox work in XCode, and he leverages Mac OS-only APIs like Core Text and Core Image. I'm not sure how portable that code is.

His main working OS is to this day OS X 10.4.

You can just build the corresponding version of Darwin which is basically OS X without some proprietary apps and without Apple support.

Given it is conserved in the state it was back then providing optimization for powerpc/altivec it might be nice platform to try out.

How much effort it will be to get it going and update hardware drivers is difficult to tell. Surely the newer versions do support more current hardware but they focus on Intel. Meaning some obscure pieces required to run on the power notebook will need to be ported from elsewhere and there might be endian problems with drivers already present because nobody ever built them for bigendian.

#97

Gnu/Linux Distros / Re: Fedora

Last post by msuchanek - May 04, 2017, 04:19:38 PM

b) PPC64 Big Endian Road - Kernel 4.x days - Its basically down to Fedora 20 Server
and Ubuntu 14 MATE. Here we have newer MATE/Cinnamon, and really fresh FF, Libre 5.x etc.
Also we need 64-bit for 4GB+ RAM

Do you have a recent FF that plays Youtube videos on ppc64 BE?

#98

Gnu/Linux Distros / Re: Fedora

Last post by Casper - May 02, 2017, 09:06:02 AM

I think we should also test Fedora, I know its not fully Libre but it's a major distribution that still supports PowerPC (albeit only PPC64 and not in their standard "Workstation" variant).
Thoughts.

b) PPC64 Big Endian Road - Kernel 4.x days - Its basically down to Fedora 20 Server
and Ubuntu 14 MATE. Here we have newer MATE/Cinnamon, and really fresh FF, Libre 5.x etc.
Also we need 64-bit for 4GB+ RAM

Little Endian is supported by newest Debian and few more Linuxes due to IBM Power8 initiative, but that is "working the things easy way" - no Altivec and IBM Power 8 optimized.

Fedora 25 Server also has a PPC64 version, does that work on the X1000?

#99

Media production to comunicate the project / Re: Let's vote for the name

Last post by Milton César - May 01, 2017, 02:12:35 AM

I have a suggestion for a name. My suggestion is PowerPhoenix.

#100

Media production to comunicate the project / Re: Let's vote for the name

Last post by robyinno - April 30, 2017, 06:59:20 PM

We have time at least until 10th May