Making G3s and Radeon graphics great again

[Baldung99]

Let me preface that I don't know much about Linux. I'm trying that on Debian 10 (a readme file in the .iso itself identifies it as "Sid" so...) because I can't seem to get the "Sid" version to even install.

But I've got a question. What exactly does Linux recognise as "higher version"? I've taken some photos of my attempts here and it looks to me I can only "downgrade" that package. Why do I get pages of unmet dependencies and what exactly am I doing wrong?

 

[z970]

Let me preface that I don't know much about Linux. I'm trying that on Debian 10 (a readme file in the .iso itself identifies it as "Sid" so...) because I can't seem to get the "Sid" version to even install.

Yes, due to Debian's release structure, our version of Debian 10 is technically Sid, but as Debian Testing and Unstable slowly merge into one Stable release every two years, Debian Unstable on a new Debian Stable release day is essentially Debian Stable, down to the same packages. This is even how the system will identify itself, greeting you at bootup with "Welcome to Debian GNU/Linux 10 buster!" instead of "Welcome to Debian GNU/Linux 11 sid!". So, what we did was point APT to a screenshot of the Unstable repositories on Buster's release day, effectively granting the ability to use Debian 10 ""sid"" as a stable snapshot, and not necessarily as a regular officially supported, flagship release.

And yes, the actual unstable Debian 11 installer / system is very unstable. That's why there are five other officially stable distro releases to choose from.

But I've got a question. What exactly does Linux recognise as "higher version"? I've taken some photos of my attempts here and it looks to me I can only "downgrade" that package. Why do I get pages of unmet dependencies and what exactly am I doing wrong?

Let me answer that question with a question. Where does Linux recognize what as a higher version?

It appears that you're trying to build a .deb package, but why, especially when you don't know much about Linux? What are you trying to do here?

You're most likely getting pages of unmet dependencies because you're trying to mix and match different versions of different packages, but said packages depend on certain versions of certain other packages.

As to why...

Here is your sources.list.

If you want to run the stable Debian 10 Buster, you need to reinstall with the provided image and repository in The PowerPC Linux Wiki. However, since you're already on the unstable Debian 11 Sid channel (as the unstable, unreleased, and buildd repositories indicate), all of your packages are newer than they would have been on Buster, and you can't just drop-in downgrade. Thus, the need to reinstall.

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main should not at all be present on a Buster or Sid installation, as that is for a different release entirely (Debian 7 instead of Debian 10).

Again, what are you trying to do here? Do you have a specific reason for using a specific distribution / release of Linux, do you just want a modern and up-to-date OS for your PowerBook with current applications, or are you just poking around to learn?

We're more than happy to help, but please be a little bit more descriptive with your issues and objectives. Thank you. 🙂

 

[Baldung99]

You're asking a lot of things I can't exactly answer but...

Again, what are you trying to do here?

I'm trying to follow this guide on a PowerBook G4, A1106 (the 1.5 GHz variant) which unfortunately has a Radeon GPU. I want an OS that's first and foremost stable, as modern and up-to-date as possible for daily use (light web browsing and such) and text editing - maybe even some YouTube if I'm feeling particularly adventurous. It seemed like this guide would get me to a point where I wouldn't have to force my GPU to operate in PCI mode but there we are...

I got some success with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS by forcing the GPU in PCI mode. Something that I suspect would mean a performance hit and I kind of need to squeeze all the performance I can get out it. Doing that, it was even possible to get hardware acceleration (according to this mesa-utils thing). I've also read that Debian is less resource-intensive than Ubuntu and I think my PowerBook would definitely benefit from running an OS as lightweight as possible.

If I wanted to teach myself Linux, I would probably go with a supported architecture - either slapping a new hard drive on my desktop just for Linux, or getting a Raspberry Pi. I'm only even considering doing anything with my PowerBook is because the alternative (an HTC Clio) really kind of sucks.

 

[z970]

You're asking a lot of things I can't exactly answer but...

I'm trying to follow this guide on a PowerBook G4, A1106 (the 1.5 GHz variant) which unfortunately has a Radeon GPU. I want an OS that's first and foremost stable, as modern and up-to-date as possible for daily use (light web browsing and such) and text editing - maybe even some YouTube if I'm feeling particularly adventurous. It seemed like this guide would get me to a point where I wouldn't have to force my GPU to operate in PCI mode but there we are...

I got some success with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS by forcing the GPU in PCI mode. Something that I suspect would mean a performance hit and I kind of need to squeeze all the performance I can get out it. Doing that, it was even possible to get hardware acceleration (according to this mesa-utils thing). I've also read that Debian is less resource-intensive than Ubuntu and I think my PowerBook would definitely benefit from running an OS as lightweight as possible.

If I wanted to teach myself Linux, I would probably go with a supported architecture - either slapping a new hard drive on my desktop just for Linux, or getting a Raspberry Pi. I'm only even considering doing anything with my PowerBook is because the alternative (an HTC Clio) really kind of sucks.

Let's sort this out.

It's not the Radeon GPU you're trying to avoid. Oftentimes, Radeon GPUs are far preferable to nVidia cards on Linux, as they are much better supported and offer better graphical performance when their nonfree firmware is installed. So, you are very fortunate. The issue is that certain variants of the Radeon 7000 and 9200 can be problematic on PowerPC Linux, which is where this guide then comes in handy.

@juancarlosonetti, maybe we can avoid this misunderstanding in the future if the thread title was changed to something more descriptive of the 7000 and 9200 chipsets instead of the entire Radeon line.

Baldung, are you putting your GPU into PCI mode because that's what the guide said to do, or are you doing that because it's the only way you can get it to work? Otherwise, I speak from experience when saying that your Mobility 9700 will be just fine on vanilla Debian or Ubuntu, without any additional necessary fixes.

If you need a guide to install Linux on your PowerBook, you're looking for The PowerPC Linux Wiki, accessible from my signature. That will contain everything you need to get a stable, working system complete with Web browsers, without any input from specialty workaround guides like this one.

Hope I helped. 🙂

 

[Baldung99]

Otherwise, I speak from experience when saying that your Mobility 9700 will be just fine on vanilla Debian or Ubuntu, without any additional necessary fixes.

In my experience, anything newer than Ubuntu 12.04 LTS won't display any kind of graphics for longer than 5 seconds, regardless if I'm using a live-CD (Lubuntu - isn't that just Ubuntu with a desktop pre-installed?), windows manager or full-fledged desktop. Same thing if I use the "server" .iso and install a desktop afterwards. Now, I haven't tried using Debian with a desktop environment (which I'll probably try soon), but I'm not holding any high hopes it'll work any better than Ubuntu.

Hell, if you want to I can install either Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04 and record it crashing...

 

[z970]

In my experience, anything newer than Ubuntu 12.04 LTS won't display any kind of graphics for longer than 5 seconds, regardless if I'm using a live-CD (Lubuntu - isn't that just Ubuntu with a desktop pre-installed?), windows manager or full-fledged desktop. Same thing if I use the "server" .iso and install a desktop afterwards. Now, I haven't tried using Debian with a desktop environment (which I'll probably try soon), but I'm not holding any high hopes it'll work any better than Ubuntu.

Hell, if you want to I can install either Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04 and record it crashing...

Any kind of graphics? Does it enter into a black screen as soon as it gets to login?

If it does, shine a flashlight onto the display's surface. See if you notice any text.

 

[Baldung99]

Any kind of graphics? Does it enter into a black screen as soon as it gets to login?

It does display graphics but I didn't remember exactly how it behaved so I went ahead and installed Lubuntu 16.04 LTS. Unless I forced PCI mode on that, the graphics would sooner or later freeze. It didn't matter if I used the "server" .iso and just installed Openbox or some other windows manager, it would freeze after a bit.

Debian 10 though.

That thing is confusing me. It displayed graphics, yes. It didn't have any brightness when I first booted into LXDE, but I was able to carefully shut it down. But then I thought "hey, plugging in my monitor won't hurt now, will it?" Well guess what it works. Now it won't show anything unless I plug in the monitor before booting... and it seems to be perfectly fine if I unplug the monitor afterwards.

EDIT: And after installing mesa-utils and running "LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo | grep render" it says "OpenGL renderer string: ATI RV350" which after some Googling seems to be a Radeon 9600...

 

[z970]

It does display graphics but I didn't remember exactly how it behaved so I went ahead and installed Lubuntu 16.04 LTS. Unless I forced PCI mode on that, the graphics would sooner or later freeze. It didn't matter if I used the "server" .iso and just installed Openbox or some other windows manager, it would freeze after a bit.

Debian 10 though.

That thing is confusing me. It displayed graphics, yes. It didn't have any brightness when I first booted into LXDE, but I was able to carefully shut it down. But then I thought "hey, plugging in my monitor won't hurt now, will it?" Well guess what it works. Now it won't show anything unless I plug in the monitor before booting... and it seems to be perfectly fine if I unplug the monitor afterwards.

EDIT: And after installing mesa-utils and running "LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo | grep render" it says "OpenGL renderer string: ATI RV350" which after some Googling seems to be a Radeon 9600...

I can't exactly speak for Ubuntu 16.04, but you need to press Fn + F2 several times once it's booted to turn the display's brightness up. For some reason, it boots into the system with the brightness off, which then needs to be corrected on each boot.

 

[swamprock]

I can't exactly speak for Ubuntu 16.04, but you need to press Fn + F2 several times once it's booted to turn the display's brightness up. For some reason, it boots into the system with the brightness off, which then needs to be corrected on each boot.

I remember Jessie doing that on my PB G4 1.5ghz, when forced into PCI mode. I'd have to wait for it to get to lightdm and then turn the brightness up to see the login screen.

 

[sparty411]

It does display graphics but I didn't remember exactly how it behaved so I went ahead and installed Lubuntu 16.04 LTS. Unless I forced PCI mode on that, the graphics would sooner or later freeze. It didn't matter if I used the "server" .iso and just installed Openbox or some other windows manager, it would freeze after a bit.

Debian 10 though.

That thing is confusing me. It displayed graphics, yes. It didn't have any brightness when I first booted into LXDE, but I was able to carefully shut it down. But then I thought "hey, plugging in my monitor won't hurt now, will it?" Well guess what it works. Now it won't show anything unless I plug in the monitor before booting... and it seems to be perfectly fine if I unplug the monitor afterwards.

EDIT: And after installing mesa-utils and running "LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo | grep render" it says "OpenGL renderer string: ATI RV350" which after some Googling seems to be a Radeon 9600...

Can you try using slim for the display manager, rather than lightdm? lightdm seems to be somewhat buggy on PPC machines.

 

[Baldung99]

Can you try using slim for the display manager, rather than lightdm? lightdm seems to be somewhat buggy on PPC machines.

I tried slim with XFCE (I saw some screenshots and it looked a bit macOS-like - I thought it'd be fitting). Now all I get is a black screen, unless I plug in an external monitor.

 

[z970]

Now all I get is a black screen, unless I plug in an external monitor.

Even with upping the brightness with Fn + F2?

 

[juancarlosonetti]

Let me preface that I don't know much about Linux. I'm trying that on Debian 10 (a readme file in the .iso itself identifies it as "Sid" so...) because I can't seem to get the "Sid" version to even install.

But I've got a question. What exactly does Linux recognise as "higher version"? I've taken some photos of my attempts here and it looks to me I can only "downgrade" that package. Why do I get pages of unmet dependencies and what exactly am I doing wrong?

You successfully installed libaudit-common in your first attempt. However, the system interprets "5" as being lower than "1:2.8.5-2". What you should do is repack libaudit-common again, but changing "1:2.8.5-2" for "1:2.8.5-3". Then it will work, and those dependency problems will stop happening.

Your second attempt fails because you specify a number in "breaks" and "replaces" lower than the libaudit1 version you have installed. I think I ****ed up that part of the guide. You should not touch anything in "breaks" and "replaces", only change to a higher version. If you do this, it should work.
[doublepost=1566758278][/doublepost]

It does display graphics but I didn't remember exactly how it behaved so I went ahead and installed Lubuntu 16.04 LTS. Unless I forced PCI mode on that, the graphics would sooner or later freeze. It didn't matter if I used the "server" .iso and just installed Openbox or some other windows manager, it would freeze after a bit.

Debian 10 though.

That thing is confusing me. It displayed graphics, yes. It didn't have any brightness when I first booted into LXDE, but I was able to carefully shut it down. But then I thought "hey, plugging in my monitor won't hurt now, will it?" Well guess what it works. Now it won't show anything unless I plug in the monitor before booting... and it seems to be perfectly fine if I unplug the monitor afterwards.

EDIT: And after installing mesa-utils and running "LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo | grep render" it says "OpenGL renderer string: ATI RV350" which after some Googling seems to be a Radeon 9600...

I remember Jessie doing that on my PB G4 1.5ghz, when forced into PCI mode. I'd have to wait for it to get to lightdm and then turn the brightness up to see the login screen.

If Debian starts with brightness set to 0, and you can see your screen by repeatedly fiddling with the brightness buttons, it is happening because of a systemd bug. The system tries to remember your previous brightness setting, but it fails, and it is set to 0.

After booting, you can disable the systemd brightness service:

$ sudo systemctl mask systemd-backlight@.service

And, after that, the screen will be set at maximum brightness during boot.

 

[z970]

If Debian starts with brightness set to 0, and you can see your screen by repeatedly fiddling with the brightness buttons, it is happening because of a systemd bug.

Only now am I really coming to hate systemd.

This didn't happen before.

 

[Baldung99]

If Debian starts with brightness set to 0, and you can see your screen by repeatedly fiddling with the brightness buttons, it is happening because of a systemd bug. The system tries to remember your previous brightness setting, but it fails, and it is set to 0.

After booting, you can disable the systemd brightness service:

$ sudo systemctl mask systemd-backlight@.service

And, after that, the screen will be set at maximum brightness during boot.

Yes! That did it, now it boots and displays the login window just fine.

 

[juancarlosonetti]

After taking a look at the radeon FreeBSD man page, it looks like the FreeBSD version of the driver has both KMS and UMS support (!): https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=radeon&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+10.2-RELEASE+and+Ports

If this is still true in 2019, FreeBSD could be the simplest way to get working graphics. I will take a look at this today.

EDIT: It seems like FreeBSD has also removed UMS support. ****.

 

[Pipeline79]

After taking a look at the radeon FreeBSD man page, it looks like the FreeBSD version of the driver has both KMS and UMS support (!): https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=radeon&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+10.2-RELEASE+and+Ports

If this is still true in 2019, FreeBSD could be the simplest way to get working graphics. I will take a look at this today.

EDIT: It seems like FreeBSD has also removed UMS support. ****.

The other problem with FreeBSD on PPC32 is that you have to build everything apart from the base system from ports. And with FreeBSD that means the whole of X windows. I tried it and gave up a few days ago.
At least you do these days, unless there's an older release with packages still knocking around.

 

[Pipeline79]

I tried this on a mac mini g4 because debian 7 was the only way I could get decent video performance. This guide, with the custom kernel, I mean. At the first stage (installing) I used the debian 10 stable snapshot instead though.
Then I followed the instructions for adding xorg from debian 7 and pinning those packages and switching to the precompiled UMS 4.4 series kernel. Doesn't boot however. Well, it get's to the text console boot output, where some of the screen is white, as if the text is selected in reverse video, and freezes up.
I'm compiling the 4.4 kernel myself at the moment to see if that works instead. Computer's been whirring away the last couple of hours. Will probably get the LD errors, as mentioned in the guide!

 

[sparty411]

I tried this on a mac mini g4 because debian 7 was the only way I could get decent video performance. This guide, with the custom kernel, I mean. At the first stage (installing) I used the debian 10 stable snapshot instead though.
Then I followed the instructions for adding xorg from debian 7 and pinning those packages and switching to the precompiled UMS 4.4 series kernel. Doesn't boot however. Well, it get's to the text console boot output, where some of the screen is white, as if the text is selected in reverse video, and freezes up.
I'm compiling the 4.4 kernel myself at the moment to see if that works instead. Computer's been whirring away the last couple of hours. Will probably get the LD errors, as mentioned in the guide!

Alternatively, it may be possible to upgrade from 7 to 8, then 8 straight to 10 after pinning packages, while using the old kernel. I’m trying this right now. The upgrade to 8 went fine, now I’m just waiting for the upgrade to 10 to finish. I’m not too concerned about security, considering the obscure arch, etc..

 

[sparty411]

Never mind. Tons of stuff breaks going from 8.11 to 10.

 

[Pipeline79]

Kernel did build fine, in about 4 hours, but booted in the same way. So that's not the problem.
Maybe I'm confused, but perhaps if you use this custom kernel without KMS for the video, I needed to add a video=radeonfb to the boot arguments?
I'm trying gentoo now. But I couldn't choose a kernel other than 4.19. So, I couldn't try this deprecated fix.
It does build a drm driver for the R200 series, definitely, within the KMS setting. But it seems that's not the problem, it's that it causes flickering, etc when activated, or falls back to no acceleration at all.
Waiting for it to finish building so I can get on with the rest of the installation.
Suppose if it isn't good, I could try fixing it later.

 

[sparty411]

Kernel did build fine, in about 4 hours, but booted in the same way. So that's not the problem.
Maybe I'm confused, but perhaps if you use this custom kernel without KMS for the video, I needed to add a video=radeonfb to the boot arguments?
I'm trying gentoo now. But I couldn't choose a kernel other than 4.19. So, I couldn't try this deprecated fix.
It does build a drm driver for the R200 series, definitely, within the KMS setting. But it seems that's not the problem, it's that it causes flickering, etc when activated, or falls back to no acceleration at all.
Waiting for it to finish building so I can get on with the rest of the installation.
Suppose if it isn't good, I could try fixing it later.

What was the outcome of your Gentoo adventure?

 

[Pipeline79]

What was the outcome of your Gentoo adventure?

😀 The outcome was that I got machine that can't build webkit. Most of gentoo/portage I found very impressive and the people on the gentoo powerpc irc channel were great. Impressive in that everything built flawlessly in pretty good time apart from webkit: on what is effectively a pretty dead architecture.
What I got from the graphics side (this thread) was that the 4.19 series kernel with kms works as long as you tell it not to build the old "radeonfb" module, which I made the mistake of allowing the first time I built my kernel.
What that leaves you with is a choice between enabling agp on boot or disabling it. So, you have the same problem as with other debian 8+ distros - if you enable agpmode=4 and allow X to try and use acceleration the system freezes up shortly after starting X windows. You can disable the acceleration in your xorg.conf and that stops that from happening.
I never got to test that out performance-wise though because the arctic fox binaries are debian/ubuntu based and were linked against older libraries than gentoo is using. I started trying to bodge them and gave up after quite a few.
Then, to build arctic fox, I needed an older gcc. That would take a while to build, and the first one I tried - gcc 4.9 failed after a couple of hours.
Then I moved onto thinking I'd just use surf instead, but that needs webkit, which won't build. One of the developers said he wasn't surprised, naturally and it probably wouldn't be fixed unless it was a very simple fix.
I wish I could program a computer myself!
So, I've done what you did yesterday. I installed debian 8 as a starting point though, then, I regressed the kernel to 3.2 - which I found you could do with apt. The window movement seems snappy enough in xfce so I think that's working.
I installed the X packages as described from the beginning of this guide, from wheezy.
Some things seem a bit weird though, like the fonts on github in arctic fox, I think. And termcap/xfce terminal has problems with color.
I'm tempted to allow those X packages to upgrade to 8, or would that cause problems? It's not booted up at the moment, might check it out again later.

 

[sparty411]

😀 The outcome was that I got machine that can't build webkit. Most of gentoo/portage I found very impressive and the people on the gentoo powerpc irc channel were great. Impressive in that everything built flawlessly in pretty good time apart from webkit: on what is effectively a pretty dead architecture.
What I got from the graphics side (this thread) was that the 4.19 series kernel with kms works as long as you tell it not to build the old "radeonfb" module, which I made the mistake of allowing the first time I built my kernel.
What that leaves you with is a choice between enabling agp on boot or disabling it. So, you have the same problem as with other debian 8+ distros - if you enable agpmode=4 and allow X to try and use acceleration the system freezes up shortly after starting X windows. You can disable the acceleration in your xorg.conf and that stops that from happening.
I never got to test that out performance-wise though because the arctic fox binaries are debian/ubuntu based and were linked against older libraries than gentoo is using. I started trying to bodge them and gave up after quite a few.
Then, to build arctic fox, I needed an older gcc. That would take a while to build, and the first one I tried - gcc 4.9 failed after a couple of hours.
Then I moved onto thinking I'd just use surf instead, but that needs webkit, which won't build. One of the developers said he wasn't surprised, naturally and it probably wouldn't be fixed unless it was a very simple fix.
I wish I could program a computer myself!
So, I've done what you did yesterday. I installed debian 8 as a starting point though, then, I regressed the kernel to 3.2 - which I found you could do with apt. The window movement seems snappy enough in xfce so I think that's working.
I installed the X packages as described from the beginning of this guide, from wheezy.
Some things seem a bit weird though, like the fonts on github in arctic fox, I think. And termcap/xfce terminal has problems with color.
I'm tempted to allow those X packages to upgrade to 8, or would that cause problems? It's not booted up at the moment, might check it out again later.

Interestingly enough, the maintainer of the Void PowerPC port fixed webkit recently. Void PPC 32 bit actually ships with epihany as the default browser. Upgrading your X packages would break 3D acceleration, but I think you'd still have 2D, as long as you did append="radeon.modeset=0" in yaboot.conf. I'm interested in whether or not you can upgrade straight to Sid, while holding back the kernel, and X packages. When I did a full upgrade, I already had a desktop environment, and tons of other packages installed, which caused the breakage I'm guessing. Maybe doing a fresh base install of 8, then upgrading to Sid would work?? I'm growing tired of fiddling with this, though.. It is quite a time sink.

 

[z970]

-