(updated) Which software/functionality for the GNU/Linux PowerPC Notebook?

[Shiunbird]

I'm still a bit torn. Choosing a future-looking endian mode and leaving Altivec behind or going for Altivec and struggle with software in the future.

What about future Altivec support in both little and big endian modes?

I'll pick up the most processor intensive software on the list and compile them with and without Altivec and compare the performance. I would skip things like LibreOffice and focus on VLC, ImageMagick, ffmpeg (or whatever the replacement is) and report back.

We need a future-looking platform but it has to work well today otherwise the project fails.

[Casper]

Then of course, one can pose the question: if NXP stops making PowerPC processors (they seem to be sweeping PowerPC under the rug for ARM at the moment), could we hypothetically cram a full POWER9 chip in a laptop (that would supposedly be a quad-core)?

Impossible. Besides the price, you need a lot more chips on the mainboard, too. Then the power rating are too high.

Maybe one of the OpenPower members will develop a less power-hungry SoC or the IBM chips might become less power hungry when they move to smaller processes. Maybe we can see what A-EON and the Amiga guys have planned for future systems (of course, they are focusing on desktop PC's, so a more power hungry system isn't really an issue for them).

Are we looking into OpenPower? For future hardware and software support, such a conglomerate of companies around the architecture could come in handy for finding solutions.

Good question 
I have asked this, too. I don't know yet, if Roberto has plans to do this.


More important. We first have to have a running crowdfunding campaign of the present project.
If this works well and we have generated a big buzz on this, then we have the spotlight to do more such projects. Maybe with different ISAs and or different devices and or different OSs. Intel outside, of course

Imagine being able to develop a FOSS system around the Elbrus 2K architecture, that would turn some heads.

[Carlos]

What about future Altivec support in both little and big endian modes?

For example, POWER8 supports AltiVec in big and little endian mode. I assume, if NXP is developing future PowerPC CPUs (QorIQ T5?), they will also support AltiVec in both modes, I hope.

Maybe one of the OpenPower members will develop a less power-hungry SoC or the IBM chips might become less power hungry when they move to smaller processes. Maybe we can see what A-EON and the Amiga guys have planned for future systems (of course, they are focusing on desktop PC's, so a more power hungry system isn't really an issue for them).

We only can hope. But I think the only company that is able to develop a stripped-down version that fits in an notebook are IBM itself.
Is someone aware what is Dan Dobberpuhl doing at the moment? Maybe we could hire him for developing a new PowerPC CPU
I don't think much about A-EON, because of the decision they made in the past. That is my personal opinion. I could be wrong, of course!

Imagine being able to develop a FOSS system around the Elbrus 2K architecture, that would turn some heads.

VLIW? x86? Waste of money

Interesting CPU architectures for possible future projects are:

PowerPC (crystal clear )
MIPS (very interesting!)
SPARC (maybe to power-hungry for notebook)
RISC-V
ARM (last place, because of the momentum they have already)

But first, we need this project working. Then the spotlight is on us and companies like IBM become aware of us.
On ownCloud, I wrote a doc with a lot of news sites, we should contact as soon as the crowdfunding is running to reach as much as people as possible.

[Carlos]

Fadi,

I have updated my software list. These are:

Douane (http://douaneapp.com)
gImageReader: Tesseract Frontend (https://sourceforge.net/projects/gimagereader/)
TextRoom (https://code.google.com/archive/p/textroom/)
Double Commander (http://doublecmd.sourceforge.net)
7-ZIP (http://7-zip.org)
Roger Router Fritzbox callmonitor GPL v2 license (https://www.tabos.org/download/)
Conky (https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky)
ntopng (http://www.ntop.org/products/traffic-analysis/ntop/)
GCstar (http://www.gcstar.org/)
Shutter (http://shutter-project.org)
CopyQ (http://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/)
youtube-dl (http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)
Functy (http://functy.sourceforge.net)
TIPP10 typing tutor GPL license (https://www.tipp10.com/en/)

[Casper]

Imagine being able to develop a FOSS system around the Elbrus 2K architecture, that would turn some heads.

VLIW? x86? Waste of money

Interesting CPU architectures for possible future projects are:

PowerPC (crystal clear )
MIPS (very interesting!)
SPARC (maybe to power-hungry for notebook)
RISC-V
ARM (last place, because of the momentum they have already)

But first, we need this project working. Then the spotlight is on us and companies like IBM become aware of us.
On ownCloud, I wrote a doc with a lot of news sites, we should contact as soon as the crowdfunding is running to reach as much as people as possible.

I think VLIW is still an interesting prospect, but that might just be me
I do hope that or NXP develops a new PPC chip or IBM develops a variant of their mainstream POWER chips (they could cut down the server centric features and downscale the chip), but there would have to be a large enough market for it to work.

As for the crowdfunding. I hope we do settle on a name and logo for the laptop before the crowdfunding begins.

[Carlos]

Name and logo before crowdfunding would be good. Otherwise, it isn't that bad, if the crowdfunding people could take influence on name and logo as well.

[Carlos]

About the Vulkan API:

I have thought, the API is open-source?

“The Vulkan working group has been driven by more positive developer energy than any other Khronos project, resulting in the release of specifications, conformance tests, and open source SDK and compiler components in just 18 months,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president at NVIDIA

KHRONOS GROUP

[Carlos]

As of Launchy, maybe a better alternative is Synapse? https://launchpad.net/synapse-project

Launchy is also discontinued

[Carlos]

Maybe Apple Swift is interesting?
https://swift.org

[Casper]

And don't forget Rust, although their PPC compiler is still in the works as far as I know.

[Carlos]

Recoll (http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/)

[cyrano]

Rebol:

http://www.rebol.com/

Very lightweight Internet oriented powerful scripting language that runs on almost everything.

[Carlos]

OpenVPN (https://openvpn.net/index.php/download/community-downloads.html)

[ifoolb]

Forgive me if I am wrong as I'm not familiar with hardware. But some distros have support for PPC64 such as Fedora, and packages they maintain should probably work. Why do ppc notebook devs need to port them? I figured that since gcc support PPC, I can compile the whole system myself if it's necessary.

[Amitari]

Fadi,

I have updated my software list. These are:

Douane (http://douaneapp.com)
gImageReader: Tesseract Frontend (https://sourceforge.net/projects/gimagereader/)
TextRoom (https://code.google.com/archive/p/textroom/)
Double Commander (http://doublecmd.sourceforge.net)
7-ZIP (http://7-zip.org)
Roger Router Fritzbox callmonitor GPL v2 license (https://www.tabos.org/download/)
Conky (https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky)
ntopng (http://www.ntop.org/products/traffic-analysis/ntop/)
GCstar (http://www.gcstar.org/)
Shutter (http://shutter-project.org)
CopyQ (http://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/)
youtube-dl (http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)
Functy (http://functy.sourceforge.net)
TIPP10 typing tutor GPL license (https://www.tipp10.com/en/)

youtube-dl is Python, it platform independent.