POSIX / Open Source Reference

[jjSuper1]

Current State of open source Linux operating systems:

CRUX PPC 3.0 - ppc64 via multilib toolchain

Debian 7.7.7 - Both "Stable" and "Testing" are built regularly, Testing iso (ppc64) rebuild weekly.
However, because most Debian packages are installed binary, this is not really a viable development
choice.

Fedora 20 - Has some major kernel bugs for PPC64 but overall stable.

FreeBSD 10.1 - ppc64 build available
netBSD - viable/mostly supported

Gentoo - ppc64, 32 and 64bit userlands (autobuild date 2014-Sep-08) - uclib experimental -
This is the most viable, as all software is compiled from source, extensive documentation exists also.

Ubuntu 14.04 - Apparently available, some kernel bugs based on specific hardware
See Debian.

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ReactOS - Windows NT Clone is also said to be ported to PowerISA, but not confirmed.

[feeef]

As my job here is to work on media production and communication, I will be the eye of the lambda user who doesn't know much about operating systems.

I may be annoying with my feedbacks, I apologize in advance, but I will try to push the "user frendly" aspect of this project. If we can acheive that, we can make it a popular success.

So Gentoo sounds very good to have a strong and fast OS for this computer but isn't it a bit tricky to install and setup compare to other distributions? I may be wrong though!

How much effort would it take to make a specific version for our notebook that would include an easy to use, nice looking graphical installer that makes people surf the net straight away?

[jjSuper1]

I personally didn't find it hard to install, it just takes a little longer because everything is literally compiled from source.  There is also a fair bit of reading, and less hand holding, which I liked.   

We will already know the hardware exactly, so we could simply provide an installation image, having already compiled the base system. then the user simply burns it to disk or usb and installs as usual.  Because the hardware will be mostly standardized, it would be easy to to this.
However we could also just pre-install?  Of course, this gets into the question of how the end user is going to acquire the actual machine, and if it will come with any storage disks, or if the user will need to supply their own hard disk.

I am also actively following http://bedrocklinux.org/  as it aims to let all the flavors play nice together.   

I believe my line of thought is going in the direction of "get the hardware working and OS running" - I hope that helps.
Please be annoying!  Sometimes we all need that.

[feeef]

This conversation is interesting. I think that the person who buys the computer should have the choice of the kind of install :

- "you don't want to spend any technical time and start using the OS straight a away, go for the Easy Install"

- "you want to be the master of your own software, go for the Do What You Want Install"

The problem will be to know the hardware indeed. If we have many harware choices, we could have a "Starter Kit" option with the same hardware and a pre-installed version of the OS for those who are not hackers, and a "Build it yourself" option for those who want to be free to do what they want.

This are just ideas and we may discuss them in a more advanced stage of this project.

Anyway, I go with the choice of Gentoo as well!

[sradonich]

We are working on a PPC Version of Ubuntu MATE 14.04. Ubuntu 14.04 is only available in server as they have dropped PPC as an official platform and couldn't get their Unity desktop to properly compile and function on the PowerPC platform. However Martin Wimpress, the main developer of the Ubuntu MATE project, along with Adam Smith who was brought on the dev team for his PPC port, has made public his intention to make PPC an official platform for the Ubuntu MATE project.

https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-trusty-powerpc/

[feeef]

That's very good news!

[robyinno]

That's awesome !!!

That's very good news!

[markos]

I'd like to state that with such hardware available, I would be able to push for ppc64 to be included in Debian officially. This would benefit most other ppc64 ports as well.

[corto]

@sradonich Great news! Even if the choice of systems is good, I think that the more relevant would be Debian and Ubuntu. The link you provided mentions yaboot and grub support. I hope that uboot will also be supported.

@jjSuper1 I don't understand why a system with binary packages would not be viable ...

@markos A push for ppc64 target would be great, for this notebook, Mac boards based on G5 CPUs, and AmigaOne X1000.

[vox]

Current State of open source Linux operating systems:

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ReactOS - Windows NT Clone is also said to be ported to PowerISA, but not confirmed.

OpenSUSE http://software.opensuse.org/132/en
Mint PPC too (unpdated for few years) http://mintppc.org/content/mintppc-11-released

ReactOS is good project, but I don`t see its use on PPC, since no WinNT apps are PPC (maybe some back to old NT 4.0 days)

Better get WINE ported to PPC64 :-) And there is QUEMU.

[HotblackDesiato]

I personally didn't find it hard to install, it just takes a little longer because everything is literally compiled from source. [...]

I agree that Gentoo is an interestíng distribution with a lot of good documentation. It is also a rolling release, which has some advantage over distros with fixed release cycles (I vividly remember the pain I always had with Ubuntu's updates, which never ran smoothly on at least one of my machines). I had used Gentoo for several years, but in the end switched to Arch Linux due to the sometimes very long compilation times of Gentoo packages, especially when it comes to KDE, Open Office, Chromium etc. On a fairly fast machine with 4 cores KDE needed over night compilation and often in the morning I had to realise that some setting had been wrong and the compilation failed sometime during the night - very frustrating.

My preference would be Arch, but they discontinued PPC support in 2012.