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Void Linux for PowerPC

i3, GTK+, and lxde have now been built!

hMOwa1l.png
 
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pochopsp said:
Great! Were you able to get hardware acceleration from the Gpu? I also noticed the name of the gpu changed in this last screenshot
Click to expand...

No, the name of the GPU didn't change, it just doesn't have enough space to show it. Yes, there's OpenGL support in X11 (if you saw the gears demo from the previous post), and drivers have been compiled for both DRI radeon and nouveau (although I haven't tested the latter).
 
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Thanks for the info, strange enough today xbps-install doesn't complain about the signatures so I got around to further
installing packages.

I meant using ip to acquire a DHCP address from my router, I think you pointed me to running a DHCP server on Void ?

I installed LXDE but can't seem to get it to start :

Gtk-Warning : Locale not supported by C library
Using the fallback 'C' locale
Gtk-Warning :cannot open display
 
Lastic said:
Thanks for the info, strange enough today xbps-install doesn't complain about the signatures so I got around to further
installing packages.

I meant using ip to acquire a DHCP address from my router, I think you pointed me to running a DHCP server on Void ?

I installed LXDE but can't seem to get it to start :

Gtk-Warning : Locale not supported by C library
Using the fallback 'C' locale
Gtk-Warning :cannot open display
Click to expand...

No, that's the DHCP client. There is no server installed by default.

Double check you have X11:
sudo xbps-install xorg xf86-video-ati or xf86-video-nouveau

Make sure to set up your locales, and refresh with:
sudo xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales
 
foxlet said:
No, that's the DHCP client. There is no server installed by default.

Double check you have X11:
sudo xbps-install xorg xf86-video-ati or xf86-video-nouveau

Make sure to set up your locales, and refresh with:
sudo xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales
Click to expand...

You may also want to consider using a Display Manager (login manager) to select desktops on demand. Both `lightdm` and `lightdm-gtk3-greeter` are available.

I tested LXDE and it worked on this end:
24RqnfM.png
 
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foxlet said:
No, that's the DHCP client. There is no server installed by default.

Double check you have X11:
sudo xbps-install xorg xf86-video-ati or xf86-video-nouveau

Make sure to set up your locales, and refresh with:
sudo xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales
Click to expand...

So I did the following :

sudo xbps-install xf86-video-nouveau
sudo xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales

That resolved the locale error but still startlxde gives me "cannot open display".

I also seem to have X now but starting X directly just gives me a black screen.

Is there a conf file I should create ?
 
Lastic said:
So I did the following :

sudo xbps-install xf86-video-nouveau
sudo xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales

That resolved the locale error but still startlxde gives me "cannot open display".

I also seem to have X now but starting X directly just gives me a black screen.

Is there a conf file I should create ?
Click to expand...

You're supposed to run `startlxde` once you're inside an X session, it doesn't start the X11 server for you. You can opt to add exec startlxde to ~/.xinitrc and use xinit to set up the X11 server, or use a DM like lightdm (as seen here).
 
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foxlet said:
You're supposed to run `startlxde` once you're inside an X session, it doesn't start the X11 server for you. You can opt to add exec startlxde to ~/.xinitrc and use xinit to set up the X11 server, or use a DM like lightdm (as seen here).
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot for the Post-installation link , I had been looking for something like that but must have completely overlooked it.

In fact I'm so used that all dependencies are pulled in that I just found that xorg wasn't installed (face palm), spent way too much time in CLI only lately.

LXDE now works, thanks a lot for your time and patience with me :)
 
The graphics stack has been updated, and now GLXgears works at full speed (60FPS synced to the display compared to 17 FPS over llvmpipe).

In addition, radeonsi, amdgpu, and Vulkan support have been enabled as well, so theoretically a modern RX-series card could work on a PPC system with a PCIe bus (I'd be curious to test it out, but I don't have any G5 or newer hardware).

eBdBMzs.png


SuperTux2 to test out all the functionality. :)

cvszj5h.png
 
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Hi foxlet,

You're trying this in what system G4 or G5?

Best regards,
voidRunner
 
This sounds awesome! I have followed Void Linux for a while and I wonder, when do you think you could release an ISO/Installer so we can try it?
 
Very interesting project, I bought a cube a few months ago and well, I though it will be useless since even debian ports was slightly killing 32 bit and even the g5 PowerMacs, this project, hope fully, will give us the power to use our old but good macs for the foreseable future I believe, I upgraded the cube to have a pata ssd, the ol Nvidia 5200 and the 1.5 gb of ram, couldnt find the processor upgrade so it is the original 450 mhz, you think that it might be enough to run this distro foxlet?
 
I would be interested in this for the G5 Quad.. all distros of Linux i tried won't work with the nvidia 6600 card. Even Ubuntu does not work as the screen goes blank during install
 
Macbookprodude said:
I would be interested in this for the G5 Quad.. all distros of Linux i tried won't work with the nvidia 6600 card. Even Ubuntu does not work as the screen goes blank during install
Click to expand...
Did you try Debian? They call it "The universal operating system" for a reason... I installed it on a 2003 laptop with a crappy video card and it recognized it fine, while other distros I tried didn't.
 
pochopsp said:
Did you try Debian? They call it "The universal operating system" for a reason... I installed it on a 2003 laptop with a crappy video card and it recognized it fine, while other distros I tried didn't.
Click to expand...

I tried most of them and still I get no splash screen.. it goes blank as its trying to install.
 
Macbookprodude said:
I tried most of them and still I get no splash screen.. it goes blank as its trying to install.
Click to expand...

Have you tried Debian Sid PPC64? That is what I run on my dual processor G5 but I mostly run it in QEMU on my laptop as that is more convenient most of the time. You can find it at https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/10.0/ppc64/iso-cd/.

Another option is Adélie Linux and they have PPC and PPC64 images, which you can find at
https://www.adelielinux.org/.
 
Macbookprodude said:
all distros of Linux i tried won't work with the nvidia 6600 card. Even Ubuntu does not work as the screen goes blank during install
Click to expand...

Interesting. One of our developers in Adélie has a G5 with a factory 6800 that just shows a black screen in X11 as well. Sounds like we may have an issue/regression in the NV40 chips on PPC(64). Looks like I have some investigating to do. Hopefully I still have an NV40 card somewhere in my spares pile…
 
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We've figured it out!

Spent all day Wednesday with a bunch of GeForces in a bunch of different computers. We found a way to make X11 work on the 6600/6800 on G5, at least under Adélie (untested on other distros):

Create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-devices.conf:

Code: 
Section "Device"
    Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra"
    Driver "nouveau"
    Option "ShadowFB" "true"
EndSection

X11 should work now.
 
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