Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[Elimar Riesebieter]

* Nicholas Dal Porto  [2017-03-07 15:31 -0800]:

> Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg

Want you run a raid6 on a Powerbook? Seems to be impossible!

Elimar
-- 
  Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge,
  not the fountainheads ;-)

Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for PowerBook G4?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 03/08/17 08:01, PhiLLip Pi wrote:

In my couple days old Debian Jessie/stable PowerPC on a very old 2002
15" Titanium PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM, it came with Firefox v45.7
ESR but it is very slow and uses too much memories.


The browser panorama is becoming dim outisde x86/amd64... And in any 
case, 512MB is not enough for anything. You need 1GB at least, seriously.


I find that seamonkey consumes less RAM - especially if you use it as 
your email client instead of Firefox+Thunderbird. I like the old-style 
interface also better.


I sometimes use Midori, but it is quite slow, even if its startup RAM 
requirements are lower (but increase later).


Riccardo

Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for PowerBook G4?

[PhiLLip Pi]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 10:01:03AM +0100, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> On 03/08/17 08:01, PhiLLip Pi wrote:
> > In my couple days old Debian Jessie/stable PowerPC on a very old 2002
> > 15" Titanium PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM, it came with Firefox v45.7
> > ESR but it is very slow and uses too much memories.
> 
> The browser panorama is becoming dim outisde x86/amd64... And in any case,
> 512MB is not enough for anything. You need 1GB at least, seriously.

:(

 
> I find that seamonkey consumes less RAM - especially if you use it as your
> email client instead of Firefox+Thunderbird. I like the old-style interface
> also better.

Ah, I use SM on my better machines but noticed it uses more RAM to me. I 
will try it in this old PB G4.

 
> I sometimes use Midori, but it is quite slow, even if its startup RAM
> requirements are lower (but increase later).

How much more later? SeaMonkey and Firefox do that too. :(
-- 
Quote of the Week: "The great companies did not know that the line 
between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone 
to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, 
for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched 
for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment." --John Steinbeck's 
The Grapes of Wrath
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this 
signature correctly.
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 / /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
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   \ _ /  If crediting, then please kindly use Ant nickname
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Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for PowerBook G4?

[PhiLLip Pi]

> > I find that seamonkey consumes less RAM - especially if you use it as your
> > email client instead of Firefox+Thunderbird. I like the old-style interface
> > also better.
> 
> Ah, I use SM on my better machines but noticed it uses more RAM to me. I 
> will try it in this old PB G4.

Where are you getting your SeaMonkey from? I don't see any in 
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceape&searchon=names&suite=stable§ion=all
 
and https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/releases/2.46/ (no PPC 
port). :(
-- 
Quote of the Week: "The great companies did not know that the line 
between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone 
to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, 
for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched 
for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment." --John Steinbeck's 
The Grapes of Wrath
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this 
signature correctly.
  /\___/\Phil./Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
 / /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o   o| | E-mail: phi...@earthlink.net/a...@zimage.com
   \ _ /  If crediting, then please kindly use Ant nickname
( )  and AQFL URL/link.

Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for PowerBook G4?

[luigi burdo]

Hi all- there are some now.

Firefox 45 ESR, Firefox 51 and Ice Cat . for now on the BE  the best are

are Firefox ESR and Firefox 47  (Ice Cat i only tested it on Fedora PPC64) .

This last two dont use EGL for video rendering it means you can play video with 
right colors and without glithces.
on G4 you can play 240/360p video on youtube with your configuration .
On G5 Quad i can play 360° VR 4k video  without issue with firefox 47 :P

Ciao
Luigi


Da: Herminio Hernandez, Jr. 
Inviato: mercoledì 8 marzo 2017 08.26
A: PhiLLip Pi
Cc: debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org
Oggetto: Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for 
PowerBook G4?

First, flash is dead under PowerPC. It will never work sadly. Besides that I 
cannot think of another gecko based browser to use. Besides FF I use Midori, 
but that is WebKit based.

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 12:01 AM, PhiLLip Pi 
mailto:a...@zimage.com>> wrote:
In my couple days old Debian Jessie/stable PowerPC on a very old 2002
15" Titanium PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM, it came with Firefox v45.7
ESR but it is very slow and uses too much memories.

I wonder if there are faster Gecko-based web browsers. If they do exist,
then they need to still work with my 20 MB places.sqlite file from and
with my faster computers' (new/lat)est SeaMonkey and Firefox versions
(Windows, Mac OS, and Linux/Debian). Same for plugins (e.g., Flash) and
extensions (uBlock Origin).

Any suggestions? Thank you in advance. :)
--
Quote of the Week: "The great companies did not know that the line
between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone
to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists,
for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched
for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment." --John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this 
signature correctly.
  /\___/\Phil./Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
 / /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o   o| | E-mail: 
phi...@earthlink.net/a...@zimage.com
   \ _ /  If crediting, then please kindly use Ant nickname
( )  and AQFL URL/link.

can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

hello ,

have the following problem:


yesterday i tried to install Debian Jessie on my Powermac G5 11,2 on a 
second Harddrive (intel ssd) and it would install fine (i use guided 
partition, all on the selected harddrive)

but when i start, it would not boot,

"please wait, loading kernel"...
/ht@0, f20/pci@9/.. unknow or corrupt filesystem


i have to admit that i had already a linux on 2nd partition inside the 
first harddrive (WD HDD), but that Lubuntu got messed up after i let it 
update to 14.04.5 LTS (14.04.2 was still fine), so i tried to install 
fresh linux on SSD.



However, when i install Wheezy with the same method, no problem, it 
would install just fine and boot without problems.



Could it be that Jessie does not write correct yaboot.conf or reads it 
from 1st HDD (although i deleted the partition linux was one after some 
failed attempt).?

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:31:15PM -0800, Nicholas Dal Porto wrote:
> Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg

Various components and scripts load by the installer are crashing. This is
most likely due to a broken toolchain during build. It could be related
to PIE being enabled for the toolchain by default [1].

Please let me know which version of Debian you were trying to install. I
need to know the exact name and source of the ISO image and how the image
was burnt. Please always provide this information in the future as otherwise
it very difficult to track down the issue.

However, if these specific error messages are reproducible with *any*
version of Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie), it's most likely a hardware
issue and you should perform some memory and CPU testing.

Thanks,
Adrian

> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening/PIEByDefaultTransition

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:01:32PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:
> "please wait, loading kernel"...
> /ht@0, f20/pci@9/.. unknow or corrupt filesystem
> 
> 
> i have to admit that i had already a linux on 2nd partition inside the first
> harddrive (WD HDD), but that Lubuntu got messed up after i let it update to
> 14.04.5 LTS (14.04.2 was still fine), so i tried to install fresh linux on
> SSD.

Please provide the partition layout and partition type for the disk in
question.

> However, when i install Wheezy with the same method, no problem, it would
> install just fine and boot without problems.

This is far too vague. You are omitting too much information to be
able to analyze the problem and help you. We need to know the exact
layout of the disks. It's important whether the partition type used is
Mac, MS-DOS or GPT.

> Could it be that Jessie does not write correct yaboot.conf or reads it from
> 1st HDD (although i deleted the partition linux was one after some failed
> attempt).?

This also impossible to say unless you provide your actual
yaboot.conf.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

i don't know how to read yaboot.conf as it would stop at boot:
where when pressing TAB
it would show
Linux   old
is this normal on New Jessie installation?


However, when i install Debian Wheezy, same method, guided partition on 
SSD , it would install AND boot just fine.


So many problems with Debian Jessie i found, but on Powermac it seems it 
runs less noisyer which would be great.


On 08.03.2017 13:20, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:01:32PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

"please wait, loading kernel"...
/ht@0, f20/pci@9/.. unknow or corrupt filesystem


i have to admit that i had already a linux on 2nd partition inside the first
harddrive (WD HDD), but that Lubuntu got messed up after i let it update to
14.04.5 LTS (14.04.2 was still fine), so i tried to install fresh linux on
SSD.


Please provide the partition layout and partition type for the disk in
question.


However, when i install Wheezy with the same method, no problem, it would
install just fine and boot without problems.


This is far too vague. You are omitting too much information to be
able to analyze the problem and help you. We need to know the exact
layout of the disks. It's important whether the partition type used is
Mac, MS-DOS or GPT.


Could it be that Jessie does not write correct yaboot.conf or reads it from
1st HDD (although i deleted the partition linux was one after some failed
attempt).?


This also impossible to say unless you provide your actual
yaboot.conf.

Adrian

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

so, i did the same install, on 2nd ssd, guided partition, with wheezy 
installer,


it boots

same installation jessie,

unknown or corrupt filesystem




On 08.03.2017 13:20, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:01:32PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

"please wait, loading kernel"...
/ht@0, f20/pci@9/.. unknow or corrupt filesystem


i have to admit that i had already a linux on 2nd partition inside the first
harddrive (WD HDD), but that Lubuntu got messed up after i let it update to
14.04.5 LTS (14.04.2 was still fine), so i tried to install fresh linux on
SSD.


Please provide the partition layout and partition type for the disk in
question.


However, when i install Wheezy with the same method, no problem, it would
install just fine and boot without problems.


This is far too vague. You are omitting too much information to be
able to analyze the problem and help you. We need to know the exact
layout of the disks. It's important whether the partition type used is
Mac, MS-DOS or GPT.


Could it be that Jessie does not write correct yaboot.conf or reads it from
1st HDD (although i deleted the partition linux was one after some failed
attempt).?


This also impossible to say unless you provide your actual
yaboot.conf.

Adrian

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

Hello Adrian,

problem is that i can't access yaboot.conf unless i go live as far as i 
know because i am stuck at yaboot, so how should i do that with debian?

i would need to boot live a lubuntu image,

so i end up installing wheezy again and upgrading to jessie; seeing if 
that works


On 08.03.2017 13:20, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:01:32PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

"please wait, loading kernel"...
/ht@0, f20/pci@9/.. unknow or corrupt filesystem


i have to admit that i had already a linux on 2nd partition inside the first
harddrive (WD HDD), but that Lubuntu got messed up after i let it update to
14.04.5 LTS (14.04.2 was still fine), so i tried to install fresh linux on
SSD.


Please provide the partition layout and partition type for the disk in
question.


However, when i install Wheezy with the same method, no problem, it would
install just fine and boot without problems.


This is far too vague. You are omitting too much information to be
able to analyze the problem and help you. We need to know the exact
layout of the disks. It's important whether the partition type used is
Mac, MS-DOS or GPT.


Could it be that Jessie does not write correct yaboot.conf or reads it from
1st HDD (although i deleted the partition linux was one after some failed
attempt).?


This also impossible to say unless you provide your actual
yaboot.conf.

Adrian

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:30:26PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:
> problem is that i can't access yaboot.conf unless i go live as far as i know
> because i am stuck at yaboot, so how should i do that with debian?
> i would need to boot live a lubuntu image,

You can just boot the Debian Installer into recovery mode, execute a
shell from the installed system on the hard disk and then copy the
yaboot.conf file over to another machine using scp.

For the partition layout, use something like fdisk -l.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:32:49PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:
> so, i did the same install, on 2nd ssd, guided partition, with wheezy
> installer,
> 
> it boots
> 
> same installation jessie,
> 
> unknown or corrupt filesystem

Why are you providing the partition layout?
Again, we cannot debug this issue if you don't provide any data.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:37:54PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:
> However, when i install Debian Wheezy, same method, guided partition on SSD
> , it would install AND boot just fine.

If you don't want to debug the actual problem, why don't you just
upgrade from Wheezy to Jessie using APT? [1].

Adrian

> [1] 
> https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

1st hdd,
part1 free
part2 hfs+ boot
part3 hfs# osx
part4 hfs swap
part5 free (used to be new world parititon, swap, ext2)
part6 free

2nd hdd
part new world boot
part2 ext2 i think root
part3 swap

On 08.03.2017 13:44, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:32:49PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

so, i did the same install, on 2nd ssd, guided partition, with wheezy
installer,

it boots

same installation jessie,

unknown or corrupt filesystem


Why are you providing the partition layout?
Again, we cannot debug this issue if you don't provide any data.

Adrian

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

yah, thats what i am doing right now, but there is a problem with 
installer, i guess.


On 08.03.2017 13:48, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:37:54PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

However, when i install Debian Wheezy, same method, guided partition on SSD
, it would install AND boot just fine.


If you don't want to debug the actual problem, why don't you just
upgrade from Wheezy to Jessie using APT? [1].

Adrian


[1] 
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html

Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for PowerBook G4?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 03/08/17 10:33, PhiLLip Pi wrote:

Where are you getting your SeaMonkey from? I don't see any in
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceape&searchon=names&suite=stable§ion=all  
andhttps://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/seamonkey/releases/2.46/  (no PPC

port).:(


I don't - I do run Firefox on my iBook currently. I generally have other 
slow or anyway older computers running Linux or BSD. I was summing up 
experience.


Riccardo

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

i did the upgrade already tonight,
and for some reason,
after installing kernel 4.5 ...
sudo ybin -v

failed on me,
i found out that the yaboot.conf parameters for the ssd were totally 
wrong, inconsitent

with the values in
 /dev/disk/by-id/

after fixing that, it would boot, but then say, oups, something went 
wrong , and fall back.


i will try again and report back, thanks

On 08.03.2017 13:50, Richard Kuenz wrote:

yah, thats what i am doing right now, but there is a problem with
installer, i guess.

On 08.03.2017 13:48, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:37:54PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

However, when i install Debian Wheezy, same method, guided partition
on SSD
, it would install AND boot just fine.


If you don't want to debug the actual problem, why don't you just
upgrade from Wheezy to Jessie using APT? [1].

Adrian


[1]
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html

Re: can't install Debian Jessie - 2n hdd/SSD

[Richard Kuenz]

after upgrading to jessie,
it would boot, but fail to get to a proper desktop.

so i would press CTRL + AlT +F1
to get into terminal

there i would try  to install Kernel by Peter Saisanas 4.5.x

as he posted earlier




copy the kernel image deb file to your hdd.

install the kernel using the command:
sudo dpkg -i linux-image-4.5.0-rc2-powerpc64_2_powerpc.deb

Once installed you need to edit yaboot.conf

Use the following command:
sudo nano /etc/yaboot.conf

Append the following text exactly as listed at the end of the file:

image=/boot/vmlinux-4.5.0-rc2-powerpc64
label=test
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img-4.5.0-rc2-powerpc64
append=""

Save yaboot.conf

Apply yaboot config with following command:

sudo ybin -v

Reboot your G5 and when prompted, ensure you enter "test" for the label 
in yaboot bootloader.









but this i could not accomplish because during the process i would get 
message from graphic card and terminal would not allow me to see what i 
write more into it.




so i switch off / on,


then computer would no more boot after pressing "l" at yaboot

and Enter


it would show /./ unknown filesystem etc.


only when i type "old" it would boot,


same procedure with kernel is being tried,


but at

"sudo ybin -v"

it would say

ybin: /dev/disk/by-id/SATA-SCSI .part2: No such file or 
directory.



when i check in
/dev/disk/by-id/

lsls

it would say:

ata-HL-DT-ST
ata-INTEL_SSDSC2
ata-INTEL_SSDSC2part2
  " part3
  " part4
  " part5
ata-WDC_WD500AADS-
ata-WDC_WD500AADS-..part2 til 6


when i crosscheck at

sudo nano /etc/yaboot.conf

i would find

boot="/dev/disk/by-id/Sata-SCSI-Intel."
device=/ht@0,f200/pci@9/k2-sata-root@c/@1/@0
partition=3
root="UUID=dd2f6991-50b8-41a7-9551-5672e60606cd"
timeout=100
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
enablecdboot
macosx"/dev/disk/by-id/Sata-SCSI-WDC_WD5000"


therefore i did change the bootstring to include the name found in 
/dev/disk/by-id/


boot="/dev/disk/by-id/ata-INTEL_SSDSC2CW120A3-CVCV2145010M120BGN-part2"

and also for

macosx"/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5000AADS-00M2B0_WD-WCAV57062892-part3"




however, when i save and exit

and later evoke


sudo ybin -v


ybin: /dev/disk/by-id/ata ..no such file or directory
[2526.91688] ioctl32(nsentev:5613):unknown cmd fd(3) 
cmd(20007043)'p';sz:0 arg(0002) on /dev/nvram






On 08.03.2017 14:01, Richard Kuenz wrote:

i did the upgrade already tonight,
and for some reason,
after installing kernel 4.5 ...
sudo ybin -v

failed on me,
i found out that the yaboot.conf parameters for the ssd were totally
wrong, inconsitent
with the values in
 /dev/disk/by-id/

after fixing that, it would boot, but then say, oups, something went
wrong , and fall back.

i will try again and report back, thanks

On 08.03.2017 13:50, Richard Kuenz wrote:

yah, thats what i am doing right now, but there is a problem with
installer, i guess.

On 08.03.2017 13:48, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:37:54PM +0100, Richard Kuenz wrote:

However, when i install Debian Wheezy, same method, guided partition
on SSD
, it would install AND boot just fine.


If you don't want to debug the actual problem, why don't you just
upgrade from Wheezy to Jessie using APT? [1].

Adrian


[1]
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html

Re: What are the fastest Mozilla's Gecko-based web browsers for PowerBook G4?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 11:01:04PM -0800, PhiLLip Pi wrote:
> In my couple days old Debian Jessie/stable PowerPC on a very old 2002 
> 15" Titanium PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM, it came with Firefox v45.7 
> ESR but it is very slow and uses too much memories.
> 
> I wonder if there are faster Gecko-based web browsers. If they do exist, 
> then they need to still work with my 20 MB places.sqlite file from and 
> with my faster computers' (new/lat)est SeaMonkey and Firefox versions 
> (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux/Debian). Same for plugins (e.g., Flash) and 
> extensions (uBlock Origin). 

I am quite sure there has never been and never will be a flash plugin
for powerpc (well at least not one that is worth using, so not gnash
for example).

Of course one could argue flash isn't worth using at all, but that's a
different issue.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 09:38:36AM +0100, Elimar Riesebieter wrote:
> * Nicholas Dal Porto  [2017-03-07 15:31 -0800]:
> 
> > Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg
> 
> Want you run a raid6 on a Powerbook? Seems to be impossible!

The kernel always prints that.  Nothing to do with wanting to use raid
or not.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:17:11PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:31:15PM -0800, Nicholas Dal Porto wrote:
> > Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg
> 
> Various components and scripts load by the installer are crashing. This is
> most likely due to a broken toolchain during build. It could be related
> to PIE being enabled for the toolchain by default [1].

Or the machine has bad ram.  But certainly a toolchain problem is
possible, although I would have thought others would have hit that
already if that was the case.

> Please let me know which version of Debian you were trying to install. I
> need to know the exact name and source of the ISO image and how the image
> was burnt. Please always provide this information in the future as otherwise
> it very difficult to track down the issue.
> 
> However, if these specific error messages are reproducible with *any*
> version of Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie), it's most likely a hardware
> issue and you should perform some memory and CPU testing.

Yeah testing with something else is a good idea.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Laurent Bigonville]

Source: babl
Version: 0.1.18-1
Severity: normal

Hi,

According to [0], optimisation upto SSE2 can be enabled on amd64.

Also, I'm not sure that altivec is officially supported on any of the
ppc ports, so I'm disabling it completely, I'm putting debian-powerpc ML
in copy.

See attached patch.

Regards,

Laurent Bigonvilleo

[0] https://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/index.en.html

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 
'experimental-debug'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_BE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_BE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
diff -Nru babl-0.1.18/debian/rules babl-0.1.18/debian/rules
--- babl-0.1.18/debian/rules2016-03-16 18:06:40.0 +0100
+++ babl-0.1.18/debian/rules2017-03-08 15:02:28.0 +0100
@@ -7,10 +7,19 @@
 
 export LDFLAGS += -Wl,--as-needed
 
+# disable sse2 except on amd64
+ifneq ($(DEB_HOST_ARCH_CPU),amd64)
+sse_flags := --disable-mmx --disable-sse --disable-sse2 
+else
+sse_flags := --enable-mmx --enable-sse --enable-sse2 
+endif
+
 DEB_CONFIGURE_EXTRA_FLAGS += \
--libdir=\$${prefix}/lib/$(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH) \
-   --disable-mmx \
-   --disable-sse
+   $(sse_flags) \
+   --disable-sse4_1 \
+   --disable-f16c \
+   --disable-altivec
 
 DEB_DH_MAKESHLIBS_ARGS_libbabl-0.1-0 = 
"--exclude=/usr/lib/$(DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH)/babl-0.1"
 DEB_DH_INSTALLDOCS_ARGS_libbabl-0.1-doc = "--exclude=Makefile"

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 03:57:55PM +0100, Laurent Bigonville wrote:
> Also, I'm not sure that altivec is officially supported on any of the
> ppc ports, so I'm disabling it completely, I'm putting debian-powerpc ML
> in copy.

The firefox package is built with AltiVec enabled and so is mplayer,
for example. So, yes, Altivec is actively used and I would honestly
refrain from disabling it in a performance-sensitive package like
babl.

Altivec is disabled on powerpcspe where it's not available in the
hardware, but most machines on which people install Debian powerpc
should have Altivec.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Laurent Bigonville]

Le 08/03/17 à 16:06, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz a écrit :

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 03:57:55PM +0100, Laurent Bigonville wrote:

Also, I'm not sure that altivec is officially supported on any of the
ppc ports, so I'm disabling it completely, I'm putting debian-powerpc ML
in copy.

The firefox package is built with AltiVec enabled and so is mplayer,
for example. So, yes, Altivec is actively used and I would honestly
refrain from disabling it in a performance-sensitive package like
babl.

Altivec is disabled on powerpcspe where it's not available in the
hardware, but most machines on which people install Debian powerpc
should have Altivec.
For the powerpc port, if G3 are still supposed to be supported, altivec 
should be disabled as they are not supporting it IIRC (longtime I didn't 
use a ppc machine).


If you are telling me altivec is OK, I guess that the flag can be 
removed and the situation can be kept as before for PPC

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 04:28:52PM +0100, Laurent Bigonville wrote:
> For the powerpc port, if G3 are still supposed to be supported, altivec
> should be disabled as they are not supporting it IIRC (longtime I didn't use
> a ppc machine).

Would it make much sense to run something like GIMP on a G3? I'd
expect the performance to be rather underwhelming. Same applies to
mplayer and Firefox.

Even a G4 is rather underpowered for something like GIMP. But at
least, it would take advantage from Altivec.

> If you are telling me altivec is OK, I guess that the flag can be removed
> and the situation can be kept as before for PPC

Let's put it this way: I wouldn't disable it until someone actually
complains :). So, please let's just keep it the way it is.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 04:06:17PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> The firefox package is built with AltiVec enabled and so is mplayer,
> for example. So, yes, Altivec is actively used and I would honestly
> refrain from disabling it in a performance-sensitive package like
> babl.
> 
> Altivec is disabled on powerpcspe where it's not available in the
> hardware, but most machines on which people install Debian powerpc
> should have Altivec.

e5500 does not have it, which means one of the modern powerpc chips
doesn't support it.

Certainly the powerpc64 port claims e5500 support, and hence does NOT
assume altivec support.

It really is something that should be runtime detected and used if
present but not required.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 10:52:21AM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> e5500 does not have it, which means one of the modern powerpc chips
> doesn't support it.
> 
> Certainly the powerpc64 port claims e5500 support, and hence does NOT
> assume altivec support.

Right. But that was something that was just changed recently. Because
one e5500 user complained about it.

> It really is something that should be runtime detected and used if
> present but not required.

It should. But it has been like that for ages and no one has
complained so far unlike with the ppc64 port. So I really think it
should stay that way. Most PowerPC machines are already underpowered,
so taking away Altivec on applications where it really makes a
difference would be suboptimal.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,
Laurent Bigonville wrote:
For the powerpc port, if G3 are still supposed to be supported, 
altivec should be disabled as they are not supporting it IIRC 
(longtime I didn't use a ppc machine).


If you are telling me altivec is OK, I guess that the flag can be 
removed and the situation can be kept as before for PPC 


I do happily run on my iBook... including firefox, which is G3. There 
are many CPUs without altivec (including PPC601/601/604)
Some applications enable alitvec only on runtime - but if that doesn't 
work, big trouble (e.g. what happened with jpeg turbo).


Riccardo

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Konstantinos Margaritis]

Στις 08-03-2017, ημέρα Τετ, και ώρα 16:55 +0100, ο/η John Paul Adrian
Glaubitz έγραψε:
> It should. But it has been like that for ages and no one has
> complained so far unlike with the ppc64 port. So I really think it
> should stay that way. Most PowerPC machines are already underpowered,
> so taking away Altivec on applications where it really makes a
> difference would be suboptimal.

For many years, Altivec enablement has been debated in both ports
(powerpc & ppc64). AFAIR, the consensus is that Altivec should be
disabled by default and either enabled in a separate package (eg.
atlas-altivec) or used through runtime detection (eg. ffmpeg, vlc).

If a package does enable altivec by default, then that's a bug and a
policy violation. On the other hand, being a SIMD fanatic that I am, I
wholeheartidly agree on enabling Altivec -and SIMD support in general-
on a distribution-wide scale. If a CPU does not support SIMD (Altivec,
NEON, SSE/AVX, etc), then tough luck (applies to Marvell, e5500, old
Intel/AMD CPUs, etc). But until that happens, we have to support the
decision, if Firefox is built with altivec enabled (and I don't mean
runtime detection, but failure to run on non-altivec CPUs), then that's
a bug, period.

Regards

Konstantinos

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Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 06:23:26PM +0200, Konstantinos Margaritis wrote:
> For many years, Altivec enablement has been debated in both ports
> (powerpc & ppc64). AFAIR, the consensus is that Altivec should be
> disabled by default and either enabled in a separate package (eg.
> atlas-altivec) or used through runtime detection (eg. ffmpeg, vlc).

I'm not aware of any of such -altivec packages and stuff like atlas
should be compiled from source on the target machine anyway for
performance reasons.

I did a quick search and I could only find ardour-altivec. Any others?

> If a package does enable altivec by default, then that's a bug and a
> policy violation. (...) But until that happens, we have to support the
> decision, if Firefox is built with altivec enabled (and I don't mean
> runtime detection, but failure to run on non-altivec CPUs), then that's
> a bug, period.

You shouldn't make such statement without actually mentioning the
section of the Debian Policy which states that Altivec has to be
turned off by default or which makes a generic statement regarding
this.

Also, powerpc is not a release architecture anymore, so I don't even
know how relevant such statements from the Debian Policy would be
nowadays.

Thanks,
Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Konstantinos Margaritis]

Στις 08-03-2017, ημέρα Τετ, και ώρα 17:34 +0100, ο/η John Paul Adrian
Glaubitz έγραψε:
> I'm not aware of any of such -altivec packages and stuff like atlas
> should be compiled from source on the target machine anyway for
> performance reasons.

That could be applied to many/most/all? packages, so why bother
packaging them in the first place? Sorry, that's not a very good
argument.

> I did a quick search and I could only find ardour-altivec. Any
> others?

Interesting, atlas-altivec is not released anymore, well, either it's
not supported for powerpc or they do runtime detection. Regardless, we
used to have more -altivec tagged packages, so either we have better
runtime detection or we're running seriously underperforming packages.

> You shouldn't make such statement without actually mentioning the
> section of the Debian Policy which states that Altivec has to be
> turned off by default or which makes a generic statement regarding
> this.

I did not mean to sound offensive, but it's just a fact. If a package
is built with altivec, it will fail on all non-altivec CPUs, so that by
definition makes the package unusable, hence a grave bug report. By all
means, let's change the minimum architecture requirements so that it's
not, and we set Altivec as mandatory but until we do that (and I
actually would vote for that with both hands), it is a grave bug. No
need to even quote policy for that, as right now powerpc port page
states those machines as supported.

> Also, powerpc is not a release architecture anymore, so I don't even
> know how relevant such statements from the Debian Policy would be
> nowadays.

Again I don't disagree there, but since it's not a release
architecture, we could just move on to newer CPUs and change the
minimum specs -which would IMHO be a good thing, as it would lower the
number of supported platforms to a much smaller and more manageable
set. I have enough PowerPC boxes here, but none without Altivec, so
even if I wanted to, I couldn't even test lack of the feature, and I
don't care enough to go into the trouble of doing that.

Regards

Konstantinos

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Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 03/08/2017 07:40 PM, Konstantinos Margaritis wrote:
> That could be applied to many/most/all? packages, so why bother packaging 
> them in the first place? Sorry, that's not a very good argument.

Actually, it is. ATLAS is one of these libraries which contain lots
of CPU optimization code and if you really want to use ATLAS for
actual number crunching, you want to build it from source. It is
very common practice in the scientific work. I am a graduated physicist
who used to do number crunching on such clusters and I also happened
to maintain several of such clusters for work.

>> You shouldn't make such statement without actually mentioning the section of 
>> the Debian Policy which states that Altivec has to be turned off by default
>> or which makes a generic statement regarding this.
> 
> I did not mean to sound offensive, but it's just a fact. If a package is 
> built with altivec, it will fail on all non-altivec CPUs, so that by 
> definition
> makes the package unusable, hence a grave bug report. By all means, let's 
> change the minimum architecture requirements so that it's not, and we set 
> Altivec
> as mandatory but until we do that (and I actually would vote for that with 
> both hands), it is a grave bug. No need to even quote policy for that, as 
> right
> now powerpc port page states those machines as supported.

I am still waiting for the section from the policy. You cannot make these
bold statements and then not come up with the necessary prove.

I assume you are aware of the fact that Debian's i386 port requires at
least an i686 CPU these days. How does that fit with your line of
arguments? According to your logic, all packages would be affected
by RC bugs because they stopped supporting i386 long time ago.

I'm sorry, but this argument contradicts the current practice.

> Again I don't disagree there, but since it's not a release architecture, we 
> could just move on to newer CPUs and change the minimum specs -which would 
> IMHO
> be a good thing, as it would lower the number of supported platforms to a 
> much smaller and more manageable set.

Again, look at i386.

> I have enough PowerPC boxes here, but none without Altivec, so even if I 
> wanted to, I couldn't even test lack of the feature, and I don't care enough 
> to go
> into the trouble of doing that.

So, you actually don't bother at all and don't want to go through
any efforts of testing, yet you insist on your stance. Odd.

Adrian

- -- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 03/08/17 19:40, Konstantinos Margaritis wrote:


Again I don't disagree there, but since it's not a release
architecture, we could just move on to newer CPUs and change the
minimum specs -which would IMHO be a good thing, as it would lower the
number of supported platforms to a much smaller and more manageable
set. I have enough PowerPC boxes here, but none without Altivec, so
even if I wanted to, I couldn't even test lack of the feature, and I
don't care enough to go into the trouble of doing that.


Well, it is very sad we aren't release anymore, IMHO, although a fact.
Yet i think it is wrong raising the bar and excluding many CPUs just 
because it makes things easier.
powerpc was (and probably still is) a quite popular debian port and I 
know of many who run those coloured iMacs with Debian!


There are also other non-Mac machines. E.g. I am pretty sure the 
Linkbook doesn't have altivec and there were a couple of other similar 
small netbooks which sadly did not get popular compared to ARM.


Riccardo

Re: Xorg fails on ATI after update (mmio aperture)

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 03/07/17 13:11, Riccardo Mottola wrote:


For the 4.8 series instead:

4.8.0-rc8-powerpc #1 Debian 4.8~rc8-1~exp1 (2016-09-26)
4.8.0-1 Debian 4.8.5 -> broken

Since I saw no other 4.7 series, I can see that the breakage happened 
already in the 4.8 series:, somewhere between:
linux-image-4.8.0-rc8-powerpc_4.8~rc8-1~exp1_powerpc.deb : 2016-09-29 
04:29:33

linux-image-4.8.0-1-powerpc_4.8.5-1_powerpc.deb : 2016-11-02 03:31:50

I couldn't find any intermediate version to test (or later series of 
the 4.7.x) , if there is one, please tell me. Does this however gives 
you already a clue? 



sorry to ping - but I got no reply. Does this rough check give a clue? 
Any intermediate version to further check? I couldn't find any.


Did debian change something in the kernel between rc8 and -1 (patches, 
config options) or did we uncover an upstream kernel bug?


Riccardo

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Konstantinos Margaritis]

Στις 08-03-2017, ημέρα Τετ, και ώρα 19:53 +0100, ο/η John Paul Adrian
Glaubitz έγραψε:
> Actually, it is. ATLAS is one of these libraries which contain lots
> of CPU optimization code and if you really want to use ATLAS for
> actual number crunching, you want to build it from source. It is
> very common practice in the scientific work. I am a graduated
> physicist
> who used to do number crunching on such clusters and I also happened
> to maintain several of such clusters for work.

Good, I'm also a physicist though now my line of work almost entirely
revolves around SIMD optimizations in several architectures (Intel,
ARM, Power and S390x ZVector), running highly parallel performance-
critical software (not Physics related since a long time ago). So I
also do have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. In any case,
I will agree that Atlas is one of the special cases where you compile
from source, but my original point was against the original bug report
and Firefox, which isn't a special case. A typical user should not have
to rebuild Firefox to get a decent performance increase.

> I am still waiting for the section from the policy. You cannot make
> these
> bold statements and then not come up with the necessary prove.

Not policy, but how about this:

https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities

and this:

https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/

Currently the systems listed there are assumed to be supported.
The statements are not bold, they are facts, my guess is that many
developer would reply pretty much the same.

> I assume you are aware of the fact that Debian's i386 port requires
> at
> least an i686 CPU these days. How does that fit with your line of
> arguments? According to your logic, all packages would be affected
> by RC bugs because they stopped supporting i386 long time ago.

The i386 port minimum requirements have been increased on a steady
basis. And it's also a fact that runtime detection works much better
there, while at the same time, a simple google search revealed quite a
few bug reports on i386 even for enabling SSE2 (which should be 
considered default on most CPUs by now). I don't see how altivec should
be different. The difference is that we're still supporting almost 20
year old hardware -or pretend to support.

> I'm sorry, but this argument contradicts the current practice.

Does it? Look below:

> Again, look at i386.

I did. And I found just from a very quick search #812989, #792594,
#852356, and I guess there are probably many more like those. So I
don't see your point.

> So, you actually don't bother at all and don't want to go through
> any efforts of testing, yet you insist on your stance. Odd.

No, you got half of it. I support the use of Altivec, properly. I'm
testing Altivec code, on Altivec hardware, I don't test Altivec code on
non-altivec hardware, or altivec detection for that matter, not
anymore. And I'm actually tired of pushing for distro-wide enablement
by default.

Anyway, if you're going to continue the discussion just to prove that
altivec should be supported, yes, I completely agree, but I disagree on
the way you propose to do it, enable it until someone complains. Please
allow me to quote the phrase which triggered my reply:

"But it has been like that for ages and no one has complained so far"


If we go your route and noone complains for a long time, that means
noone bothered to run the software in that very old hardware and we're
just limiting the  performance for the rest of our users -who have
supporting hardware, for absolutely no good reason. If someone
complains immediately (as they did for ppc64) then that means people
are actually still using powerpc port on non-altivec hardware. What I'm
actually suggesting -now and have been for a long time- is that we
should be more sincere and just admit we cannot support every possible
configuration and we should try to at least support the top range of
the hardware as best as we can, and maybe even give a decent speed bump
by enabling altivec throughout, so in essence I'm advocating -yet once
more, to just declare non-altivec hardware as unsupported and be done
with it. Users of older hardware should just upgrade or use an older
version.

Regards

Konstantinos

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Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Konstantinos Margaritis]

Στις 08-03-2017, ημέρα Τετ, και ώρα 20:08 +0100, ο/η Riccardo Mottola
έγραψε:
> Well, it is very sad we aren't release anymore, IMHO, although a
> fact.
> Yet i think it is wrong raising the bar and excluding many CPUs just 
> because it makes things easier.
> powerpc was (and probably still is) a quite popular debian port and
> I 
> know of many who run those coloured iMacs with Debian!
> 
> There are also other non-Mac machines. E.g. I am pretty sure the 
> Linkbook doesn't have altivec and there were a couple of other
> similar 
> small netbooks which sadly did not get popular compared to ARM.

I do not disagree on those points, but it's all a matter of resources.
We do not have the resources of testing on all those platforms, and I
personally know of no Linux powerpc developer that works on a non-
altivec system -except for embedded which is a different case.

In any case, I'm sorry but I still believe that even more so now it's
more important to let go of the older platforms and just increase our
base requirements to enforce Altivec, definitely for powerpc, and
possibly even for ppc64. That way, we might some day, make it back to
release architecture with a smaller set of supported architectures. As
it is, I highly doubt it.

Konstantinos

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Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR)]

Hi,

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017, Konstantinos Margaritis wrote:

> > There are also other non-Mac machines. E.g. I am pretty sure the 
> > Linkbook doesn't have altivec and there were a couple of other
> > similar small netbooks which sadly did not get popular compared to
> > ARM.
>
> I do not disagree on those points, but it's all a matter of resources.
> We do not have the resources of testing on all those platforms, and I
> personally know of no Linux powerpc developer that works on a non-
> altivec system -except for embedded which is a different case.

I'm pretty sure A-Eon, who are selling the AmigaOne X5000 based on an
e5500 core, funds the work of some Linux people to keep Debian up to date
for that system. And that's a pretty juicy multicore desktop machine, with
PCIe slots, RadeonHD videocards and everything, yet no Altivec.

Based on their earlier activities, I'd guess A-Eon would be willing to
support the right person with hardware, if this makes the difference.

> In any case, I'm sorry but I still believe that even more so now it's
> more important to let go of the older platforms and just increase our
> base requirements to enforce Altivec, definitely for powerpc, and
> possibly even for ppc64. That way, we might some day, make it back to
> release architecture with a smaller set of supported architectures. As
> it is, I highly doubt it.

I think until some larger company backs it, or there's mass demand, like
with other release versions, it won't happen anyway. I agree though, that
the target needs to be redefined, other than "keep those old Macs running
somehow".

But it's still ironic in the light of this discussion that one of, if not
the strongest desktop PPC box one can buy these days has no Altivec. And
there are much smaller OSes than Linux which somehow still manage to
handle this situation.

Just my two cents...

Charlie

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 03/08/2017 09:45 PM, Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR) wrote:
> I'm pretty sure A-Eon, who are selling the AmigaOne X5000 based on an
> e5500 core, funds the work of some Linux people to keep Debian up to date
> for that system. And that's a pretty juicy multicore desktop machine, with
> PCIe slots, RadeonHD videocards and everything, yet no Altivec.

I actually have two Tabor A1222 boards from them which I set up as buildds
for the powerpcspe port. One of the boards is broken and I have been waiting
for a replacements for months now.

> Based on their earlier activities, I'd guess A-Eon would be willing to
> support the right person with hardware, if this makes the difference.

I'm not sure how serious they are with these efforts given the fact that
I still haven't got a replacement for the second board yet :(.

> I think until some larger company backs it, or there's mass demand, like
> with other release versions, it won't happen anyway. I agree though, that
> the target needs to be redefined, other than "keep those old Macs running
> somehow".

This is pretty much the key issue. It lacks support from the community and
a big company. When I talked with IBM people, they said they basically don't
care about 32-Bit PowerPC anymore although they are still doing some bug
fixing, but things like a golang port for 32-Bit PowerPC won't happen.
At least there is a ppc64 (POWER5) port of golang.

> But it's still ironic in the light of this discussion that one of, if not
> the strongest desktop PPC box one can buy these days has no Altivec. And
> there are much smaller OSes than Linux which somehow still manage to
> handle this situation.

This isn't "Linux", it's a single application for which non-Altivec variants
don't make much sense anyways. Do these smaller OS even support applications
like mplayer, Firefox or GIMP?

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 08:08:59PM +0100, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> Well, it is very sad we aren't release anymore, IMHO, although a fact.
> Yet i think it is wrong raising the bar and excluding many CPUs just because
> it makes things easier.
> powerpc was (and probably still is) a quite popular debian port and I know
> of many who run those coloured iMacs with Debian!
> 
> There are also other non-Mac machines. E.g. I am pretty sure the Linkbook
> doesn't have altivec and there were a couple of other similar small netbooks
> which sadly did not get popular compared to ARM.

This is a current in production machine:

http://www.amigaos.net/hardware/133/amigaone-x5000

No altivec.  Not an old CPU.

-- 
Len Sorensen

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 03/08/2017 09:52 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> This is a current in production machine:
> 
> http://www.amigaos.net/hardware/133/amigaone-x5000
> 
> No altivec.  Not an old CPU.

With the pricetag of a Macbook Pro Retina:

> http://amigaonthelake.com/amigaone-x5000-first-encounters-motherboard-bundle/

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR)]

Hi,

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

> > I'm pretty sure A-Eon, who are selling the AmigaOne X5000 based on an
> > e5500 core, funds the work of some Linux people to keep Debian up to date
> > for that system. And that's a pretty juicy multicore desktop machine, with
> > PCIe slots, RadeonHD videocards and everything, yet no Altivec.
>
> I actually have two Tabor A1222 boards from them which I set up as buildds
> for the powerpcspe port. One of the boards is broken and I have been waiting
> for a replacements for months now.

Right. Although the Tabor is not in production yet and never went on sale
officially, because they're waiting for the AmigaOS4.1 developers to pull
together some semi-working system for the machine. As it supposed to sell
bundled...

> > Based on their earlier activities, I'd guess A-Eon would be willing to
> > support the right person with hardware, if this makes the difference.
>
> I'm not sure how serious they are with these efforts given the fact that
> I still haven't got a replacement for the second board yet :(.

Indeed. Actually the X5000 seems out of stock everywhere, and A-Eon is
quite silent these days. But if not them, then no one, at this point, I'd
say.

> > I think until some larger company backs it, or there's mass demand, like
> > with other release versions, it won't happen anyway. I agree though, that
> > the target needs to be redefined, other than "keep those old Macs running
> > somehow".
>
> This is pretty much the key issue. It lacks support from the community and
> a big company. When I talked with IBM people, they said they basically don't
> care about 32-Bit PowerPC anymore although they are still doing some bug
> fixing, but things like a golang port for 32-Bit PowerPC won't happen.
> At least there is a ppc64 (POWER5) port of golang.

You mean the Go developers require a company backing a port to accept it
mainline, or just the usual case - there are zero people with both Go and
PowerPC interest?

> > But it's still ironic in the light of this discussion that one of, if not
> > the strongest desktop PPC box one can buy these days has no Altivec. And
> > there are much smaller OSes than Linux which somehow still manage to
> > handle this situation.
>
> This isn't "Linux", it's a single application for which non-Altivec variants
> don't make much sense anyways.

I was referring to the idea of restricting the entire Debian PPC port to
Altivec only.

> Do these smaller OS even support applications like mplayer, Firefox or
> GIMP?

Yes and no. :)

Both MorphOS and AmigaOS4 has a heavily customized MPlayer port, and at
least the MorphOS version has runtime Altivec detection. MorphOS supports
runtime Altivec detection elsewhere in the system too, like various JPEG
and other format decoders, Ogg, MP3, FFMPEG for video-thumbnail icons in
the desktop, whatnot. They also have their own set of custom Altivec
optimizations here and there. And no, no Firefox, but there's a WebKit
based browser called OWB, with a custom mediaplayer subsystem (based on
FFMPEG, et.al.), which can do Altivec with runtime detecion as well, if
I'm not mistaken.

And the last two platforms added to MorphOS, the ACube's Sam460 and the
A-Eon A1 X5000 have no Altivec, while most users are still on old Macs,
with Altivec. The details might vary, but the situation is similar with
OS4 too.

Charlie

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

On 03/08/2017 10:16 PM, Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR) wrote:
> Right. Although the Tabor is not in production yet and never went on sale
> officially, because they're waiting for the AmigaOS4.1 developers to pull
> together some semi-working system for the machine. As it supposed to sell
> bundled...

Interesting. I had heard that there will be a AmigaOS4 port but I wasn't
aware that they were waiting for the port to be released. The boards itself
are pretty nice though.

> Indeed. Actually the X5000 seems out of stock everywhere, and A-Eon is
> quite silent these days. But if not them, then no one, at this point, I'd
> say.

I agree.

> You mean the Go developers require a company backing a port to accept it
> mainline, or just the usual case - there are zero people with both Go and
> PowerPC interest?

Both the ppc64el (POWER8) and the ppc64 (POWER5) port are maintained directly
by IBM people. I asked them about 32-Bit PowerPC and they said that it's too
old for them to care about it.

> I was referring to the idea of restricting the entire Debian PPC port to
> Altivec only.

Ok, but I'd say the majority of packages have no native Altivec support
anyway. The packages which support Altivec, are probably better off with
Altivec enabled anyway.

> Both MorphOS and AmigaOS4 has a heavily customized MPlayer port, and at
> least the MorphOS version has runtime Altivec detection.

Yeah, the Linux version does that as well.

> And no, no Firefox, but there's a WebKit
> based browser called OWB, with a custom mediaplayer subsystem (based on
> FFMPEG, et.al.), which can do Altivec with runtime detecion as well, if
> I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, I know of OWB. I'm actually a huge Amiga fan with tons of Amiga
machines sitting in the basement. I also happen to maintain Debian's
m68k port and managed to bump it to 10,500 built packages, including
Firefox and LibreOffice :).

> And the last two platforms added to MorphOS, the ACube's Sam460 and the
> A-Eon A1 X5000 have no Altivec, while most users are still on old Macs,
> with Altivec. The details might vary, but the situation is similar with
> OS4 too.

I have a Mac Mini G4 for which I have been planning to buy a license of
Morphos. It currently runs an outdated installation of Debian unstable
as it's currently put into storage.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

What are you guys running on your PowerBook G4's Debian PPC?

[PhiLLip Pi]

Server? Workstation? Old school text stuff? Just curious. I am trying to 
see what I can use my slow PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM to do. 

Thank you in advance. :)
-- 
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for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched 
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( )  and AQFL URL/link.

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR)]

Hi,

On Wed, 8 Mar 2017, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

> Interesting. I had heard that there will be a AmigaOS4 port but I wasn't
> aware that they were waiting for the port to be released. The boards itself
> are pretty nice though.

Yeah. I was quite tempted to get one, and replace my old DebianPPC Pegasos
II/G4 with it, but then I had to move to a different city, and my Pegasos
II/G4 server was replaced by a Raspberry Pi 2 instead, which is much more
lightweight to carry around, and actually fine for what I need it (mostly
just low bandwidth tunneling, backups to an external drive, and a terminal
IRC client)...

I also considered adding SPE support to the Free Pascal PowerPC port, as I
happen to be a maintainer of the m68k port, so I know the compiler
internals, but I wasn't convinced there was enough demand, and also I
wanted to keep the leftovers of my sanity... (Which is not a lot, I
admit... :)

> > You mean the Go developers require a company backing a port to accept it
> > mainline, or just the usual case - there are zero people with both Go and
> > PowerPC interest?
>
> Both the ppc64el (POWER8) and the ppc64 (POWER5) port are maintained directly
> by IBM people. I asked them about 32-Bit PowerPC and they said that it's too
> old for them to care about it.

Well, it wasn't that long ago when IBM was still actively selling 32bit
PowerPC cores for servers, and even for supercomputers, but of course
every company is trying to get rid of its legacy stuff - which is
everything which the management decided that it probably won't drive
future sales...

> Yeah, I know of OWB. I'm actually a huge Amiga fan with tons of Amiga
> machines sitting in the basement. I also happen to maintain Debian's
> m68k port and managed to bump it to 10,500 built packages, including
> Firefox and LibreOffice :).

Ok, I think regarding m68k I'm going to reply outside of this thread...
We might have plenty to talk about... ;)

> > And the last two platforms added to MorphOS, the ACube's Sam460 and the
> > A-Eon A1 X5000 have no Altivec, while most users are still on old Macs,
> > with Altivec. The details might vary, but the situation is similar with
> > OS4 too.
>
> I have a Mac Mini G4 for which I have been planning to buy a license of
> Morphos. It currently runs an outdated installation of Debian unstable
> as it's currently put into storage.

I happen to be a MorphOS betatester, so I have a quite wide selection of
machines. Though hardly more than one of my 15" PowerBook G4s is in use
these days, except before releases. :(

Charlie

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Konstantinos,

Konstantinos Margaritis wrote:

I do not disagree on those points, but it's all a matter of resources.
We do not have the resources of testing on all those platforms, and I
personally know of no Linux powerpc developer that works on a non-
altivec system -except for embedded which is a different case.


define "developer" - I am not a debian developer, but I am definitely an 
open-source developer and take proudly care of supporting most 
architectures I can and have access to. All the GNUstep stuff I have 
access to, maintain or even write myself.
That goes from FTP applications up to 2D FFTs on Images, convolutions, 
filters, etc.


Actually, I use my iBook mostly for that - development and testing. To 
Browse the web I use x86 or amd64 nowadays.
It is a fact that the PPC port is mostly about "old macs" so the age of 
our HW is older for most!
However I do run debian also on older x86 hardware without the newest 
SSE2/SSE3 stuff and it runs. I even have NetBSD on an original Pentium 
system and it does work. Apparently most software still copes better 
with various x86 differences than e.g. G3 vs G4.


Currently however, I consider my iBook fully functional - except for the 
glitch with the newer kernels breaking ATI xorg, but that is a different 
question from here.


I go further: all the people I know that use PPC use it on older Mac or 
Amiga boards. Not cool IBM machines. There is a lot of different 
usage... from embedded to datacenters!


Riccardo

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[Nicholas Dal Porto]

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 8, 2017, at 6:33 AM, Lennart Sorensen  
> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:17:11PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:31:15PM -0800, Nicholas Dal Porto wrote:
>>> Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg
>> 
>> Various components and scripts load by the installer are crashing. This is
>> most likely due to a broken toolchain during build. It could be related
>> to PIE being enabled for the toolchain by default [1].
> 
> Or the machine has bad ram.  But certainly a toolchain problem is
> possible, although I would have thought others would have hit that
> already if that was the case.
> 
>> Please let me know which version of Debian you were trying to install. I
>> need to know the exact name and source of the ISO image and how the image
>> was burnt. Please always provide this information in the future as otherwise
>> it very difficult to track down the issue.
>> 
>> However, if these specific error messages are reproducible with *any*
>> version of Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie), it's most likely a hardware
>> issue and you should perform some memory and CPU testing.
> 
> Yeah testing with something else is a good idea.
> 
> -- 
> Len Sorensen
> 

Re: Xorg fails on ATI after update (mmio aperture)

[Michel Dänzer]

On 09/03/17 04:19 AM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> On 03/07/17 13:11, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
>>
>> For the 4.8 series instead:
>>
>> 4.8.0-rc8-powerpc #1 Debian 4.8~rc8-1~exp1 (2016-09-26)
>> 4.8.0-1 Debian 4.8.5 -> broken
>>
>> Since I saw no other 4.7 series, I can see that the breakage happened
>> already in the 4.8 series:, somewhere between:
>> linux-image-4.8.0-rc8-powerpc_4.8~rc8-1~exp1_powerpc.deb : 2016-09-29
>> 04:29:33
>> linux-image-4.8.0-1-powerpc_4.8.5-1_powerpc.deb : 2016-11-02 03:31:50
>>
>> I couldn't find any intermediate version to test (or later series of
>> the 4.7.x) , if there is one, please tell me. Does this however gives
>> you already a clue? 
> 
> 
> sorry to ping - but I got no reply. Does this rough check give a clue?
> Any intermediate version to further check? I couldn't find any.

Did you see John's followup? It had some suggestions for finding
intermediate versions.


> Did debian change something in the kernel between rc8 and -1 (patches,
> config options) or did we uncover an upstream kernel bug?

Can you provide the two /boot/config-4.8* files? If you attach them
directly, maybe compress them e.g. with gzip to avoid running into
mailing list size limits.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer   |   http://www.amd.com
Libre software enthusiast | Mesa and X developer

Re: Xorg fails on ATI after update (mmio aperture)

[Michel Dänzer]

On 09/03/17 10:34 AM, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> On 09/03/17 04:19 AM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
>>
>> Did debian change something in the kernel between rc8 and -1 (patches,
>> config options) or did we uncover an upstream kernel bug?
> 
> Can you provide the two /boot/config-4.8* files? If you attach them
> directly, maybe compress them e.g. with gzip to avoid running into
> mailing list size limits.

Or maybe just attach the output of diff -u for the two files.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer   |   http://www.amd.com
Libre software enthusiast | Mesa and X developer

Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports

[luigi burdo]

im using my quad g5 is my everyday computer. turn on my i7 macbook only when i 
need heavy video renders where the g5 will be 2.3x time slower.
same is for the x5000 but there altivec is not needed or better altivec 
software make issue. yes there are many issue on ppc linux. endianess in the 
gles making wrong colors. 
issue with glamor and egl but the machines gave really good desktop experiences 
and 
not make me thing about using x86 new hw.


luigi

Inviato da iPad

> Il giorno 08 mar 2017, alle ore 23:46, Riccardo Mottola 
>  ha scritto:
> 
> Hi Konstantinos,
> 
> Konstantinos Margaritis wrote:
>> I do not disagree on those points, but it's all a matter of resources.
>> We do not have the resources of testing on all those platforms, and I
>> personally know of no Linux powerpc developer that works on a non-
>> altivec system -except for embedded which is a different case.
> 
> define "developer" - I am not a debian developer, but I am definitely an 
> open-source developer and take proudly care of supporting most architectures 
> I can and have access to. All the GNUstep stuff I have access to, maintain or 
> even write myself.
> That goes from FTP applications up to 2D FFTs on Images, convolutions, 
> filters, etc.
> 
> Actually, I use my iBook mostly for that - development and testing. To Browse 
> the web I use x86 or amd64 nowadays.
> It is a fact that the PPC port is mostly about "old macs" so the age of our 
> HW is older for most!
> However I do run debian also on older x86 hardware without the newest 
> SSE2/SSE3 stuff and it runs. I even have NetBSD on an original Pentium system 
> and it does work. Apparently most software still copes better with various 
> x86 differences than e.g. G3 vs G4.
> 
> Currently however, I consider my iBook fully functional - except for the 
> glitch with the newer kernels breaking ATI xorg, but that is a different 
> question from here.
> 
> I go further: all the people I know that use PPC use it on older Mac or Amiga 
> boards. Not cool IBM machines. There is a lot of different usage... from 
> embedded to datacenters!
> 
> Riccardo
> 

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[Nicholas Dal Porto]

It was the RAM! Replaced it and it installed without a hitch. However, Wireless 
isn't working. Anyone know a fix?

> On Mar 8, 2017, at 6:33 AM, Lennart Sorensen  
> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:17:11PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:31:15PM -0800, Nicholas Dal Porto wrote:
>>> Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg
>> 
>> Various components and scripts load by the installer are crashing. This is
>> most likely due to a broken toolchain during build. It could be related
>> to PIE being enabled for the toolchain by default [1].
> 
> Or the machine has bad ram.  But certainly a toolchain problem is
> possible, although I would have thought others would have hit that
> already if that was the case.
> 
>> Please let me know which version of Debian you were trying to install. I
>> need to know the exact name and source of the ISO image and how the image
>> was burnt. Please always provide this information in the future as otherwise
>> it very difficult to track down the issue.
>> 
>> However, if these specific error messages are reproducible with *any*
>> version of Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie), it's most likely a hardware
>> issue and you should perform some memory and CPU testing.
> 
> Yeah testing with something else is a good idea.
> 
> -- 
> Len Sorensen
> 

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[Herminio Hernandez, Jr.]

depends on your chip. What does dmesg say?

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 11:28 PM, Nicholas Dal Porto 
wrote:

> It was the RAM! Replaced it and it installed without a hitch. However,
> Wireless isn't working. Anyone know a fix?
>
> > On Mar 8, 2017, at 6:33 AM, Lennart Sorensen <
> lsore...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:17:11PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
> wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:31:15PM -0800, Nicholas Dal Porto wrote:
> >>> Here's a photo of the pertinent section:
> http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg
> >>
> >> Various components and scripts load by the installer are crashing. This
> is
> >> most likely due to a broken toolchain during build. It could be related
> >> to PIE being enabled for the toolchain by default [1].
> >
> > Or the machine has bad ram.  But certainly a toolchain problem is
> > possible, although I would have thought others would have hit that
> > already if that was the case.
> >
> >> Please let me know which version of Debian you were trying to install. I
> >> need to know the exact name and source of the ISO image and how the
> image
> >> was burnt. Please always provide this information in the future as
> otherwise
> >> it very difficult to track down the issue.
> >>
> >> However, if these specific error messages are reproducible with *any*
> >> version of Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie), it's most likely a hardware
> >> issue and you should perform some memory and CPU testing.
> >
> > Yeah testing with something else is a good idea.
> >
> > --
> > Len Sorensen
> >
>
>

Re: Problems installing Debian on Powerbooks

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Include the output of "lspci -vvv" please.

Adrian

> On Mar 9, 2017, at 8:04 AM, Herminio Hernandez, Jr. 
>  wrote:
> 
> depends on your chip. What does dmesg say?
> 
>> On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 11:28 PM, Nicholas Dal Porto  
>> wrote:
>> It was the RAM! Replaced it and it installed without a hitch. However, 
>> Wireless isn't working. Anyone know a fix?
>> 
>> > On Mar 8, 2017, at 6:33 AM, Lennart Sorensen 
>> >  wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 01:17:11PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>> >>> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:31:15PM -0800, Nicholas Dal Porto wrote:
>> >>> Here's a photo of the pertinent section: http://i.imgur.com/hHZyDfg.jpg
>> >>
>> >> Various components and scripts load by the installer are crashing. This is
>> >> most likely due to a broken toolchain during build. It could be related
>> >> to PIE being enabled for the toolchain by default [1].
>> >
>> > Or the machine has bad ram.  But certainly a toolchain problem is
>> > possible, although I would have thought others would have hit that
>> > already if that was the case.
>> >
>> >> Please let me know which version of Debian you were trying to install. I
>> >> need to know the exact name and source of the ISO image and how the image
>> >> was burnt. Please always provide this information in the future as 
>> >> otherwise
>> >> it very difficult to track down the issue.
>> >>
>> >> However, if these specific error messages are reproducible with *any*
>> >> version of Debian (Squeeze, Wheezy, Jessie), it's most likely a hardware
>> >> issue and you should perform some memory and CPU testing.
>> >
>> > Yeah testing with something else is a good idea.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Len Sorensen
>> >
>> 
> 

Re: What are you guys running on your PowerBook G4's Debian PPC?

[Mathieu Malaterre]

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 10:53 PM, PhiLLip Pi  wrote:
> Server? Workstation? Old school text stuff? Just curious. I am trying to
> see what I can use my slow PowerBook G4 with 512 MB of RAM to do.

I use my MacMiniG4 for:
- ssh server to outside (ppc32 is uncommon so it gives me impression
of improved security).
- git server
- build+test robot for big endian compilation+testing.

I used it in the past for running minidlna but I had to give up mainly
because of bug #774149 (using kodi with a dedicated RPi3B+ now)

Obviously this may not fit a laptop goal.

-M