LMDE 6 PPC

[Jeroen Diederen]

Preparatory work on porting LMDE 6 to the PowerPC arch has begun. The idea behind this project is that this distribution will run on modern PowerPC computers like Mirari and the PowerPC-notebook.
LMDE 6 PPC ships with a cinnamon desktop. The porting comprises most packages as found in Linux Mint Debian Edition 6. Some packages will not be included in LMDE 6 PPC. The serious work (i.e. compiling arch dependent packages) has been done. The packages have been uploaded to the MintPPC server and installation tests will be done. I will update soon with more information.

LMDE 6 PPC – MintPPC

 

[reukiodo]

Curious why not debian directly? Then all the derivatives should be able to benefit.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Curious why not debian directly? Then all the derivatives should be able to benefit.

Debian is available for powerpc/ppc64 in debian-ports.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

An update:
Thought I had all packages required to install lmde6. I relied on Debian for the cinnamon packages. The result was a working cinnamon but with Debian branding inside. The screensaver for example gave a login screen with a Debian logo on top of the username. I don’t really like that. After extensive research I found out where it comes from. It has to do with the fact that some unwanted packages are drawn in as dependencies if you install cinnamon the Debian way. The solution is to build the whole cinnamon environment from lmde6 sources. That is what I am doing right now. To be continued…

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

I have a working installation of LMDE 6 PPC now The Debian branding issue has been solved. The only thing that needs to be done now is testing on real hardware, as I run this system in QEMU Power10. It is slow as hell.