On 2025-09-16, at 1:45 PM, Stan Johnson wrote:
> On 9/16/25 12:36 PM, Christian Zigotzky wrote: >> >>> On 16 September 2025 at 5:10 pm, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Another idea could be to disable Altivec for the 32-bit port and enable it >>> on the 64-bit port so that the 64-bit embedded CPUs could use the 32-bit >>> port. >>> >> >> That sounds good. >> > > PowerMac G4 systems, such as PPC G4 MDD, are 32-bit, but they also > support Altivec. > Given the option of a) disabling altivec for all PPC machines, vs b) just for that one PPCG4 system it would easily be the less crippling option to sacrifice Altivec for that one PPC G4 system rather than sacrifice it for everyone. Of course, upstreaming runtime Altivec detection is the best. Not at all likely to happen 20 years after these machines left the gate, but still, best if they will accept it. There are many examples of how to do runtime Altivec detection that present themselves with 5 minutes of Googling, including some compelling patches in FIreFox added by Cameron Kaiser. I have no idea how likely it would be to sell a separate linux PPC build farm of +altivec and -altivec to the debian powers that be. Probably not much enthusiasm for maintaining that, but who knows. Ken
