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Arch Linux on PPC, of all things

repairedCheese

repairedCheese

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 13, 2020
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It's not mine, I can't promise how well it works, it primarily supports ppc64le but given a couple screenshots, and the 32-bit UNSTABLE WIP branch, I couldn't help but share.

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1624633296180.png


Courtesy the Facebook group I found it in. It's clearly very early days, but just a glance at the github tells you it's in active development as of this post.

 
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repairedCheese said:
It's not mine, I can't promise how well it works, it primarily supports ppc64le but given a couple screenshots, and the 32-bit UNSTABLE WIP branch, I couldn't help but share.

View attachment 1797726
View attachment 1797727

Courtesy the Facebook group I found it in. It's clearly very early days, but just a glance at the github tells you it's in active development as of this post.

Click to expand...
Wait So LITTLE ENDIAN on PowerPC Macs is a real thing? I wasn’t sure if this existed. I always knew it was possible because PowerPC Macs can technically boot in either Big Endian or Little Endian.

For example, In theory, if I just compiled Half Life on this arch Linux little Endian distro as is, it would Just Work since no Big Endian issues would have to be fixed.

I can’t really tell if this is little Endian or not, can you verify if it is?
 
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alex_free said:
Wait So LITTLE ENDIAN on PowerPC Macs is a real thing? I wasn’t sure if this existed. I always knew it was possible because PowerPC Macs can technically boot in either Big Endian or Little Endian.

For example, In theory, if I just compiled Half Life on this arch Linux little Endian distro as is, it would Just Work since no Big Endian issues would have to be fixed.

I can’t really tell if this is little Endian or not, can you verify if it is?
Click to expand...
no, ppc64le is POWER9, not powerpc. it's what you would run on something like a raptorcs talos 2 or equivelant POWER workstation.
 
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@alex_free To my knowledge, any New World PowerPC machine is capable of "running" in little endian mode via a switch in Open Firmware. I say "running" however, because actually flipping it bricks the machine instantly.

Therefore, I would hazard that the answer is likely: very, very difficult.
 
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@alex_free As it pertains to Arch Linux, all they did was skip PPC64, and just support PPC. PPC64 would have been an easier target, Void has made that fairly clear. But PPC is the more interesting one. Also, PPC Void is a little lacking, so personally, I'd like to see more effort put towards 32-bit PPC Linux, which seems to be where this is going.
 
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repairedCheese said:
@alex_free As it pertains to Arch Linux, all they did was skip PPC64, and just support PPC. PPC64 would have been an easier target, Void has made that fairly clear. But PPC is the more interesting one. Also, PPC Void is a little lacking, so personally, I'd like to see more effort put towards 32-bit PPC Linux, which seems to be where this is going.
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I have mixed feelings over Arch. It's good because it have a big documentation and many package support over AUR. The bad it's forums aren't the friendliest place on the internet (here's a great place overall :)) and because AUR it's maintained by the community some packages get abandoned or break without the proper upgrades, and I'm don't personally a big fan of systemd. The Void distro have much potential but some packages on 32 bits are very difficult to port (like Firefox) for what I've talked with the VoidPPC maintainer over email. Don't get me wrong; I've got both distros installed over my Thinkpads and I like/welcome more diversity of Linux distro everywhere (PowerPC, x86, ARM) because when I joined this forum I remember that if you wanna try an updated Linux the only option was Debian unstable.
 
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Why on earth would Apple implement setenv little-endian? at all in the first place if this bricks the machine? Is there any Open Firmware documentation about it? Apparently it is recoverable but only after shorting the mobo battery terminals (with the battery removed) or allegedly by pressing the power button for 1-2 mins.

I can't help but wonder whether this might be something to exploit on to run ppc64le linux on G5s, is it that the G5 lacks the le mode altogether or that it simply lacks the MSR endianness switch bit? Allegedly qemu+KVM PS enables hypervisor mode to run a guest OS in little-endian on the G5 (https://jhamby.medium.com/retrocomputing-powerpc-part-1-271f74a08241) since the G5 hypervisor is apparently factory-disabled.

Anyone tried sticking a ppc winnt CD (little endian) in a G3/4 or ppc64le linux DVD in a G5 after entering this?
 
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z970 said:
@alex_free To my knowledge, any New World PowerPC machine is capable of "running" in little endian mode via a switch in Open Firmware. I say "running" however, because actually flipping it bricks the machine instantly.

Therefore, I would hazard that the answer is likely: very, very difficult.
Click to expand...

So supposedly the MDD and G5 Quad "boot" in little-endian mode however without display


Could it be that a little-endian VGA firmware is needed (such as a PC VGA BIOS or Intel Mac EFI ROM)?
 
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I think thats because there is no littie endian ppc rom? Don't know since ati cards with pc vga bios can be used on late 05s with linux.
 
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PowerfulEra said:
I think thats because there is no littie endian ppc rom? Don't know since ati cards with pc vga bios can be used on late 05s with linux.
Click to expand...

Precisely what I was wondering too. Somehow the rom of e.g. an HD5770 gets recognised by Linux (Debian/OpenSuse in my case) and the card gets correctly initialised, but obviously after kernel loading. Even though this is on big endian ppc64 Linux, and the rom is little endian. When building Gentoo using this setup, when configuring the kernel, you can even specifiy which rom file to use for it. On the other hand, vga bioses are written for x86, so there is probably more to it... Maybe the rom isn't actually used per se?

In any case, to work in little endian mode, I guess one either probably needs a little endian rom, WinNT ppc for example supposedly supports off-the-shelf Cirrus PCI VGA cards


 
pc297 said:
Precisely what I was wondering too. Somehow the rom of e.g. an HD5770 gets recognised by Linux (Debian/OpenSuse in my case) and the card gets correctly initialised, but obviously after kernel loading. Even though this is on big endian ppc64 Linux, and the rom is little endian. When building Gentoo using this setup, when configuring the kernel, you can even specifiy which rom file to use for it. On the other hand, vga bioses are written for x86, so there is probably more to it... Maybe the rom isn't actually used per se?

In any case, to work in little endian mode, I guess one either probably needs a little endian rom, WinNT ppc for example supposedly supports off-the-shelf Cirrus PCI VGA cards


Click to expand...
The ROM for AMD video card ROM starting at about HD2xxx use a format that is decoded/interpreted by software. The Linux decoder knows this is little-endian, and on big-endian machines it calls the necessary byte swap routines to interpret the data correctly.
 
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