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PowerPC Linux support to continue in Debian Ports

LightBulbFun said:
the FireGL X3 works now?!

where there any specific steps you had to do apart from the non free and radeon.agp stuff?

also can you post a glxinfo -B output please? :) (note the capital B)
Click to expand...

I had it working,stock xorg config, and radeon.agpmode=-1 but now it just stuck at blackscreen after init of login manager(lightdm) & X.

You can try disable ATi acceleration via xorg.conf and change AGP Speed to 4x (radeon.agpmode=4). Maybe it works, I didnt try.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2339861
 
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Traace said:
I had it working,stock xorg config, and radeon.agpmode=-1 but now it just stuck at blackscreen after init of login manager(lightdm) & X.
Click to expand...

And herein lies an excellent example of the instability but blistering development pace of Sid.

Incredible.
 
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Odd. I've had zero issues with getting x to work, but I *am* using stock GPUs and have only tested one desktop thus far (iMac G4 1.25ghz).
 
I'm currently in touch with powerprogress.org sid repo community, trying to fix unmet dependencies on ppc64 (G5) for mplayer.
They also still have a listing issue with firefox-esr (tries to take a package thats not available on repo)
 
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Traace said:
I'm currently in touch with powerprogress.org sid repo community, trying to fix unmet dependencies on ppc64 (G5) for mplayer.
They also still have a listing issue with firefox-esr (tries to take a package thats not available on repo)
Click to expand...

Good job.
 
The Debian Ports mailing list has been a bit busy lately, with one of the topics being the re-addition of missing packages to the ports repo. As a result, some work has been done to ppc64 (with a lot more still left to be done) and many packages that had fallen behind for ppc32 have been finally updated. gvfs is now fully updated, so the workaround that I posted in the past is no longer needed for accessing network shares, and others are being added and updated daily. Stay tuned...
 
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Do you suppose the archive keyring prerequisite will eventually come preinstalled and become a non-issue for the user?

Because for me, that's really one of Sid's only hurdles.
 
For usable web browsers, there are a couple of things that can be done. For Qupzilla, the Jessie repo can be added to sources.list and installed from there ("deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie main") with no issues. Midori can be installed from Jessie Backports ("deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main"). I added both repos and disabled the sid repos, then did apt update, and installed both browsers. I then reversed the process, disabling the older repos and re-enabling the sid repos, with no issues.

Granted, both browsers are older and out of date, but are the most stable that I could find for sid, until the rust compiler gets fixed for PowerPC (hence why Firefox isn't able to be built for PPC). Just don't do any online banking...

qupzilla.png
 
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A small update...

I tested a few video game emulators, and found Mednafen and Stella quite usable. Everything runs at full speed in Stella on my 1.33ghz iBook G4, and most of the systems supported by Mednafen run at full speed. Genesis and SNES emulation needed a bit of frameskip, but were definitely playable. Mednafen supports Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, SNES, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Playstation (I didn't test this one), Atari Lynx, Sega Master System, and a few others. Both emulators (and Mednaffe, which is an essential frontend for Mednafen) are available in sid. Here's a shot of Stella running on my iBook:

stella.png


I'm sure that there are other emulators available (computer, etc.), but I went with those that I knew would run at a decent clip on an old iBook. I haven't tried MAME yet, but may do so soon.
 
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@swamprock I still have to try it, but sooner or later I'll get latest Debian build running on my iBook too. I open this thread every time there is a new reply as this is very very interesting to me. PSX emulation is very nice as it can expand a lot the library of games available for PowerPC Macs. On OS X there is PCSX but it is not perfect. Unfortunately there are two big bugs ruining the experience: 1) The emulation is very good but after 15-20 minutes of gaming the app just crashes; 2) Some games suffer from graphic glitches (i.e. Crash Bandicoot 3). I know on Morphos there is a very good PSX emulator, maybe a lot better than PCSX so, if we get one working on linux, it would be a great achievement. Another thing I'd like to see working on my iBook is MTP usb connection. I own a Htc One, so there are a lot of apps on android which can make me transferring files between the iBook and my phone but it is so slow compared to a USB connection. Is there a way to make the MTP transfer protocol working under Debian?
 
pochopsp said:
@swamprock I still have to try it, but sooner or later I'll get latest Debian build running on my iBook too. I open this thread every time there is a new reply as this is very very interesting to me. PSX emulation is very nice as it can expand a lot the library of games available for PowerPC Macs. On OS X there is PCSX but it is not perfect. Unfortunately there are two big bugs ruining the experience: 1) The emulation is very good but after 15-20 minutes of gaming the app just crashes; 2) Some games suffer from graphic glitches (i.e. Crash Bandicoot 3). I know on Morphos there is a very good PSX emulator, maybe a lot better than PCSX so, if we get one working on linux, it would be a great achievement. Another thing I'd like to see working on my iBook is MTP usb connection. I own a Htc One, so there are a lot of apps on android which can make me transferring files between the iBook and my phone but it is so slow compared to a USB connection. Is there a way to make the MTP transfer protocol working under Debian?
Click to expand...

https://packages.debian.org/sid/mtp-tools

I do most of my PSX gaming on my Bondi iMac G4 under OS 9, with an old PSX USB controller adapter. With the G4 upgrade, VGS runs everything at full speed.

Alas, I have all of my PPC machines packed away at the moment, as I'll be moving back into my house soon, now that repairs are almost complete. I'll pick up my experiments and posting to this thread once the move is complete.
 
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swamprock said:
Debian PPC Status Update

Support will continue, but has been migrated to Debian Ports and users must run unstable (Sid). I just downloaded the net-install iso and will be doing some testing...

EDIT: If you use the iso instead of upgrading your Jessie install, be prepared to download the debian ports keyring on another system and copying it via ssh/scp, as wget isn't installed by default, and you will not be able to connect to any repositories listed without this key.Barring that, you *may* be able to copy the keyring deb to a usb drive and mount it to copy it over...
Click to expand...

I'm a little confused, the netinstall iso doesn't seem to be able to connect to any mirrors?

What can I do to fix that?
 
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swamprock said:
See post #58. You'll have to install a base system using only the cdrom first, then do a few steps to add the ports repositories. None of the mirrors will work from the iso.

Read http://powerpcliberation.blogspot.com/2018/07/debian-ppc-status-update.html for info about the ports repos.
Click to expand...
Thanks, that looks like a lot of work. I don't think they'll get too many testers with this poor way of doing things.

Seems to me, they stopped updating things because of the lack of testers/users.

I'll wait and see if they don't update the iso to fix these things. Mate with the latest stable kernel is fine by me, for now.
 
DearthnVader said:
Thanks, that looks like a lot of work. I don't think they'll get too many testers with this poor way of doing things.

Seems to me, they stopped updating things because of the lack of testers/users.

I'll wait and see if they don't update the iso to fix these things. Mate with the latest stable kernel is fine by me, for now.
Click to expand...

I agree that it's a pain in the ass using this method, but until Adrian can finish his install isos, this is the only way to get things up and running. I haven't seen anything on the mailing list lately about these isos, so I don't know the status. One can just hope that he finishes them soon...

I've set up a sid install on my Blackbook 4,1 to use as a companion machine to my iBook, while I partake in various experiments (I'm posting this from it now). I'm taking notes as I do certain tasks on this machine for comparison purposes and to see if I can perform the same tasks on my iBook once it's unpacked. If only my iBook would run at this speed...
 
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For anyone else who managed to get sid running on G4s, and have been following the thread about wicknix's fork of Pale Moon (Arctic Fox), there is a PPC linux version of the web browser, built by XaPHER, that is currently the most up-to-date and stable one that you can use. Grab it from that thread and XaPHER's post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...r-for-10-6-64bit.2133051/page-2#post-26624845

Give it a go and please post your results. You can view my results in that same thread.
 
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I'm not promising anything, but I'm currently exploring how to put together a sort of "live" cd with a very minimal system and the proper repositories to make the job of installing sid much easier than how it has to be done now. It's a bit overwhelming and definitely out of my experience comfort zone, but I'll research things further and see if this is actually possible for me to do. This port of Debian is actually much more stable and has less of the headaches as the older releases did. It just takes a lot of work to get things rolling. I'm hoping to change that...
 
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I still use debian 7 wheezy on powerpc and it functions well, only the browser is a bit outdated with iceweasel31.
if someone can give help on how to compile newer firefox or similar for powerpc that would be very nice.
 
@mrkapqa Arctic Fox should work in Wheezy, last time I checked. Just click the link in The PPC Debian Wiki Software section and download the .deb. Latest build I believe was in March 2020.
 
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