Void Linux for PowerPC

[wicknix]

Not really just a Void issue, but any linux I've tried on my 11,2 does this. I swapped out the radeon 1900 for the nvidia 6600 for obvious reasons (1900 not supported). All distros boot to desktop, but they all only show 80% of the screen. The proper 1920x1080 resolution is detected. Changing resolution results in the same problem. Top part of screen is not shown. Display is fine in tiger and leopard. Anyone else with a 6600 ever run in to this? Cant find much info online.

Cheers

 

[TzunamiOSX]

Not really just a Void issue, but any linux I've tried on my 11,2 does this. I swapped out the radeon 1900 for the nvidia 6600 for obvious reasons (1900 not supported). All distros boot to desktop, but they all only show 80% of the screen. The proper 1920x1080 resolution is detected. Changing resolution results in the same problem. Top part of screen is not shown. Display is fine in tiger and leopard. Anyone else with a 6600 ever run in to this? Cant find much info online.

View attachment 2026974

Cheers

Did you test an other environment like KDE or LXDE?

 

[wicknix]

Tested Adelie Mate & KDE, Ubuntu 12 & 16 w/LXDE, and Void XFCE. Same issue with all of them. Resolution reports fine in all of them. 1920x1080, and I have 2d/3d, 32bit color, etc. Top of screen is just black. Cant see task bars or icons above that point. It's odd.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

@wicknix
0. Change videocable..?
1. Change display?
2. Change GeForce? (7800Gt can be flashed really simply & that which I own - single slotted.)

 

[netsrot39]

I tried to install Void Linux on my PowerMac G5 2,3 GHz Dual Core yesterday but the DVD would never boot to a live environment. Instead I'm stuck at a black screen and the G5 turns on the fans at full blast. I'm pretty sure the issue is the Quadro FX 4500 and know I get it why Torvalds once gave the finger to Nvidia. I haven't found a lot of informaion regarding this but as I'm understanding it: The cards available back in the day for the PCIe PowerMac G5 (Geforce 6600LE, Geforce 6600, Radeon X1900XT, Quadro FX4500, Geforce 7800GT) don't work right or at all in Linux. Therefore setting up a dual boot systems with OS X and Linux is out of the question. Am I right?

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

don't work right or at all in Linux

In my experiments - only nV-cards worked with Linux. Couldn't get video from radeons. BTW - you;ve got a bit wrong model for x1900 . It have to be X1900GT, flashable.

 

[netsrot39]

It have to be X1900GT, flashable.

Afaik X1950XT and X1900GT PC cards can be flashed to Mac (I did both and it worked).

only nV-cards worked with Linux.

Which Nvidia cards did you use? I guess newer ones?

 

[wicknix]

Therefore setting up a dual boot systems with OS X and Linux is out of the question. Am I right?

I hope not. Linux was the whole reason i wanted this beast of a G5. Worst case its a faster interwebppc build machine than my other G5's, but not really what i wanted it for.

 

[Tratkazir_the_1st]

I guess newer ones?

Wrong assumption . One was default 6600LE, second - 7800GT flashed (ASUS model). Works both. But Debian made life a bit hard, because it's defalt login manager (or how is it called), lightdm - wasn't working right & screen always blinked. Until I installed some other (sddm or slim or wdm).

 

[dextructor]

Time to iSight install everyone!

After a while without posting I decided to contribute with some knowledge (I don't know if the same would apply to separated iSight firewire webcams) after wasting a lot of time testing.

The iMac G5 iSight it's the only PowerPC to have an integrated webcam, and to use it requires proprietary firmware (because it's an Apple product ) To use it in another system than OSX will require some work and following the steps.

1 - Download the extracted firmware iSight.tar.zst (If you have an older Linux distro you could manually make it from your own firmware files from OSX). There's an already extracted firmware mirror if you wish.

2 - If you don't have utility to extract zst files, install now

sudo xbps-install -S zstd

3- Create the directory where you will extract the firmware

mkdir ~/Downloads/iSight

4 -Extract the file

tar --use-compress-program=unzstd -xvf iSight.tar.zst -C ~/Downloads/iSight

5 - Copy the firmware to the destination

sudo cp ~/Downloads/iSight/usr/lib/firmware/isight.fw  /usr/lib/firmware/

6 - Poweroff the machine (reboot didn't work and it's not recomended!)

Once successful, completely shutdown your Mac and start it back up again (to clear the hardware state of the webcam). Do not reboot.

7 - Verify that the iSight its detected

v4l2-ctl --list-devices

8 - Test with your available player of choice

ffplay /dev/video0

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480:device=/dev/video0 -fps 30

mpv av://v4l2:/dev/video0 --profile=low-latency --untimed

I even tested with the Firefox 68 ESR with some random webcam test site and worked flawlessly! (I wouldn't recomend because it make the CPU go to 100% all the time, compared to ffplay 18%, mplayer 30% and mpv 75%) So if still exist some usefull real app that could benefit from an webcam... Profit!

BUG: If you use your iSight on Linux and you wanna switch to OSX for example. Poweroff and start again (don't reboot), always poweroff! The same apply if you have used the iSight on OSX and will switch to other OS. I've tested a lot to reach this conclusion

 

[wicknix]

All distros boot to desktop, but they all only show 80% of the screen. The proper 1920x1080 resolution is detected.

So... would you believe this? All these weeks of dinking around looking for solutions, using different GPU's (even random PC cards) and they all had the same issue. I was about to give up but then i figured i'd try a different monitor. Had an old 17" 4:3 Acer lcd laying in the closet. Plugged it in. Booted. 100% displayed desktop! Why my 27" 16:9 lcd didn't display properly is beyond me as it displays fine on my dual cpu 2ghz with all flavors of Linux. Anyway, i'm happy even if i have to use a smaller monitor for now. This 11,2 really cruises. Puts the dual 2ghz to shame on Linux.

Obligatory screen shot

 

[mrkapqa]

@wicknix, yes, i remember having problems with graphics card when 2xdvi present, like with 6600. one solution was to use right dvi port instead of left one, may sound silly, but helped. (could also have been vice-versa)

 

[wicknix]

It took fixing 2 files in freebl but i got current Pale Moon to build on VoidPPC64. My only oops... I left official branding enabled so i can't share it. I'll rebuild with generic branding soon though.

 

[pochopsp]

It took fixing 2 files in freebl but i got current Pale Moon to build on VoidPPC64. My only oops... I left official branding enabled so i can't share it. I'll rebuild with generic branding soon though.

What's Freebl?

 

[wicknix]

Part of NSS (network security services).

 

[wicknix]

Ok. Generic branding version is now available for glibc void64 (BE/G5)
Standalone package. Just extract and run.

palemoon-31.2.linux-powerpc64-void64be.tar.bz2

drive.google.com

Cheers

 

[mrkapqa]

sadly, for one reason or another, the palemoon31 does not show up as executable on debian 7. maybe it is finally time to upgrade.

 

[wicknix]

It will only work on the glibc version of Void64.

Cheers

 

[PowerHarryG4]

Would there be any way to enable DRM on firefox to listen to the spotify web player? I can't figure out how to do it.

 

[dextructor]

Would there be any way to enable DRM on firefox to listen to the spotify web player? I can't figure out how to do it.

To my limited knowledge: No.

Elaborated answer: Any DRM it's made from a company interested in maintain control in which ways you consume that particular media (Digital Right Management) so they will develop the tools to ensure that you "have the rights" to consume it legally.

Linux isn't by a long shot a huge user share base in the computer world, and if you take PowerPC Linux, it's a fraction of that.

Why you have DRM in Linux? Because of Google's Chromebooks, they had the need to ensure that you "can" have a viable DRM media consume platform so they worked with those who control to make it work.

This draconian control isn't easily ported without the "fairy dust" that only these companies have to bless the code for the program to run this special media.

So if you wanna use Spotify in any Browser good luck, maybe there's any alternative way, but I'm not aware because I'm not interested in giving away my right to do with my things anything I want in the way I want. Sorry if I couldn't help you more with that.

 

[dextructor]

It took fixing 2 files in freebl but i got current Pale Moon to build on VoidPPC64. My only oops... I left official branding enabled so i can't share it.

That's impressive. I have some questions:

1) How that differs from any of your browsers? Ok, the code base should be slightly ahead with some fixes, but anything else? It's better? What's your opinion of using it until now?

2) Do you still have the instructions of how to build it for future generations sake?

Thanks

 

[wicknix]

Newer patches, security updates and some other goodies like improved javascript. So some sites do render again that were broken before.

I started a 32bit build on my 12" powerbook when I left for work this morning. If it successfully builds there as well i will upload that binary and the files i changed.

Cheers

 

[wicknix]

Well... the powerbook didn't have enough memory, even with swap, to link libxul.so. 16 hours this poor machine screamed for nothing. Lol. The good news is i know it'll build on 32bit since it got that far in to the build. I knew killing ubuntu off on the DP G5 would bite me in the arse some day.

Anyway, if someone else wants to give it a shot my fixed source is here.
Build instructions here.

 

[dextructor]

Would there be any way to enable DRM on firefox to listen to the spotify web player? I can't figure out how to do it.

Well since today I had some spare time I decided to use 5 minutes trying to answer your question more helpfully... But my answer regarding using an Internet Browser continues the same: NO!

So, in the ArchWiki about Spotify you can see that are alternative methods to listen Spotify.

Like I said that I don´t have an account and at the moment, I don´t have any reason to create one, so I didn´t properly test it. (Do your own test, and report back with your results to help others that may have the same problems, ok?)

If you wanna a lightweight solutions (Terminal and Daemon) you have the following options:

spotifyd
spotify-tui

If you want a GUI client you have this only option:

spotify-qt

You will need to connect to Spotify API and get the info required when setting up the applications.

Here's as far as I can go about this topic.

Have fun

 

[PowerHarryG4]

I recently found a Radeon HD 4670 at a garage sale and wanted to try it on Void. I installed void on my powermac G5 with a quadro fx 4500. When I put in the Radeon card I just get a black screen. How can I load the correct drivers for the card?