Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

UXP is ported to PowerPC Linux

wicknix

wicknix

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 4, 2017
2,636
5,324
Wisconsin, USA
With the help from rpxrpx on the pale moon forum pointing me in the right direction i have successfully built the latest 28.4.1 release for 32-bit powerpc linux! I had to modify a bunch of makefiles and rip out all the sse2 and -m64 flags they tossed in. This release is on par with Firefox 60.9 esr in terms of browser engine. While i dearly love Arctic Fox, it was meant mainly for OS X 10.6 when the project started. Powerpc linux/bsd was just a bonus as it didn't require modifications. While Arctic Fox is a tad lighter on resources, this works well for those stubborn sites you run across that are too complex for AF's slightly older backend. I've only run across 1 big issue. They ripped out legacy support in some of the multimedia code, so there is no video playback on powerpc. You just get the youtube spinning circle. Web audio (sound cloud for example) works fine. As a work-a-round installing grease monkey with the viewtube script, and installing the vlc browser plugin works perfectly. At any rate, I'm stoked. Things are looking up for ppc linux. :)

Tested working on my mac mini g4 under lubuntu 16 (pure 32-bit kernel and userland)
Tested working on PMG5 under lubuntu 16 (64-bit kernel, 32-bit userland)

I built with their unofficial "NewMoon" branding, since well... powerpc isn't officially on their supported list.
Download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jbUbRCj8saWN0knitjWkdV-r5zgnG_jm/view?usp=sharing
Modified source: https://github.com/wicknix/UXP4PPC32
The binary archive is the same type as Arctic Fox's. Just extract and run.

Cheers

palemoon28-powerpc32.png
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: lepidotós, juanstdio, eastone and 10 others
Wow, great job! This is easily the snappiest browser I've ever used on my Powerbook.
 
sparty411 said:
Wow, great job! This is easily the snappiest browser I've ever used on my Powerbook.
Click to expand...

Are you on Debian 8 or 16.04?

Currently trying to achieve functionality on Debian 8. libstdc++6 is a pain in my @$$.
 
z970mp said:
Are you on Debian 8 or 16.04?

Currently trying to achieve functionality on Debian 8. libstdc++6 is a pain in my @$$.
Click to expand...

I reinstalled 8, and did a full upgrade to 10. The first time I did a full upgrade, it borked. Chugging along happily now, with a backlit keyboard and all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: z970
I realized something interesting. Let's say you were to disable JS in a browser with an older layout engine, ok? It would be completely unusable. However, when disabling JS on browsers with newer rendering engines, web pages seem to format/render accurately for the most part. Of course, this breaks multimedia, but it makes surfing the web in general a far more tolerable (and ad-free!) experience on these old machines.

Death to Javascript.
 
  • Like
Reactions: z970
dbdjre0143 said:
That is amazing work @wicknix! With all the progress that's been made as of late, I may end up dual-booting Linux on my G5 Quad when I finally get around to rebuilding the LCS...
Click to expand...

Welcome to the Penguin Side.

May I recommend your first stop be The Linux Thread, when you're able to? It's designed for simplicity and comprehensiveness, after all. ;)
 
Last edited:
Good stuff. Here it is running on my 1ghz TiBook under Debian sid-

newmoontibook.png


It is a bit heavier than Arctic Fox with regards to CPU usage on this machine. I get 100% spikes and some freezing occasionally, depending on the site. It'll definitely come in handy on occasion. I'll have to give it a try on my G5 as well. Nice work!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back