Re: Is a Raptor Blackbird (or other Power machine) a good general-purpose desktop?
Le 21/03/2023 à 13:37, Linux User #330250 a écrit : Lionel Élie Mamane wrote on 03/21/23: On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 02:43:44AM +, Edward Robbins wrote: On Mon, 20 Mar 2023 at 23:36, Lionel Élie Mamane wrote: No candidate laptops I presume? There is perhaps some day, this project is making slow but steady progress. Looks like it may be crazy expensive in the end though https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ Thanks for the link, interesting and I didn't know about this one indeed. Beyond "not available this year", I see the one-but least FAQ https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/faq/ says that it won't run a "modern distro" in little-endian mode, as "although it does support LE, modern distros require some functionality that are not available to this CPU". And Debian's only 64 bit Power port seems to be... little endian? Big endian is not even listed on https://www.debian.org/ports/ as being in progress, it is not there at all. With everywhere devs stating that BE is dead, and dropping support for older architectures like Itanium with the hint that nobody uses it anyhow and that it would only bind resources for no reason, it was also my personal perception that PowerPC BE has no future. I was looking at those projects in the past, but there are two problems: 1. They are way too expensive in terms of a performance to price ratio. 2. They are getting way too less support to make that extra investment worthwhile. With the one exception of the Raptor POWER10 systems maybe, but they are quite expensive as well. For me, as a private Linux user (not programmer, not developer, not using those systems commercially in any way), it would "merely" be an ideological decision. For now I'm on PC systems (desktops, laptops) with Windows preinstalled, and I get very well supported Linux systems at a reasonable price. In the past I also used Apple systems, which were sometimes a little more expensive than their respective PC counterparts, but back then the prices for, say, a Power Mac G4, were not that astronomical than they are today with, say, an iMac Pro or a Mac Pro. The only affordable Mac would be a Mac mini, but that one is no longer expandable in any way, and it is full of proprietary Apple stuff as well, starting with the Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) based boot process.[1][2] I would love to see a competitive truly open Linux computer, starting with alternative (if not open) processor designs (Power/PowerPC, MIPS, Arm, RISC-V), along with open source firmware (e.g. Coreboot) and ending with full Linux support. But I would even consider an x86 system, as long as it isn't overpriced and old, like the Libreboot project.[3] Or IMHO also like the Librem. If it were AMD Zen 3 based, I'd probably have bought it. But 10th Gen Intel Core i? No, thank you. Also, especially with Laptops, it's also much about taste... and style... and "feeling"... I like my Lenovo Legion more, and traditionally always had something like a ThinkPad, because I like its style the most (the keyboard, the three mouse buttons -- which sadly the Legion doesn't have). For a desktop I would be happy if the motherboard were some standard, like ATX, so it could fit in any compatible desktop case. The Raptor however was always way above my margin of what I can afford.[4] One thing though, and maybe someone can clarify for me: Why is it software-wise not possible to emulate an LE system on top of a BE system? The (Linux) kernel should be able to emulate being LE on BE hardware, shouldn't it? (E.g. I know of, but have never used, patched Mac OS X kernels, XNU, with SSSE3 emulation, i.e. the kernel will provide SSSE3 support even though the CPU running on doesn't have SSSE3.) Would a live BE<->LE translation be so different? I'd rather have a slower but working emulated LE system than a in theory faster BE system with constant problems, like the one mentioned in Firefox.[5] Thanks. Linux User #330250 [1] https://asahilinux.org/about/ [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/security/sec59b0b31ff/web [3] https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/ [4] https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html [5] https://www.talospace.com/2023/02/firefox-110-on-power.html One concern with Intel processors is the presence of a secret component in the processor, which is suspect to be there to spy on user and/or take control of the chip from the Internet. There isn't such a component in the Powerpc family. AFAIK Librem software has not fully disabled this thing. Another concern is that a software which does run only on one single endianness proves to be buggy and loosely written. High level software such as Firefox should be independant of such considerations, exactly as it should not rely on internal details of the implementation of libraries, the libc in the first place. In this respect, the revival of Linux on BE arches -- together with libcs alternative to glibc -- would be a big service to the Linux ecosystem. --
Re: Is a Raptor Blackbird (or other Power machine) a good general-purpose desktop?
Le 23/03/2023 à 00:43, Riccardo Mottola a écrit :
Hi,
Didier Kryn wrote:
Another concern is that a software which does run only on one single
endianness proves to be buggy and loosely written. High level software
such as Firefox should be independant of such considerations, exactly as
it should not rely on internal details of the implementation of
libraries, the libc in the first place. In this respect, the revival of
Linux on BE arches -- together with libcs alternative to glibc -- would
be a big service to the Linux ecosystem.
That's the theory. Practice is different.
Yes, always (~:
E.g. if you use GNUstep, an OpenStep/Cocoa reimplementation which has
multiplatform in by design, your life is happy. Most endianness problems
are solved inside, so if you write an application in it, it will be
cross-platform, except if you wrote some low-level code code with
graphics, network byte swapping or such.
You could still have issues, as certain code (e.g. shifts, swaps, casts,
signed/unsigned issues) works in one endiannes and not the other or
vice-versa.
That's the point. casts and swaps should be encapsulated in very
low-level routines. They are overused, by facility il places they should
not. The C language implements implicit type conversion and the compiler
can handle safely sign issues; the programmer should keep her/his hands
off of it; it is a question of discipline. There is, unfortunately a
culture of terse programming in C which goes against safety.
something like a browser, however, is a mess. It handles a lot of stuff
wuite low-level, graphics layers, GL, sound, countless image and video
codec libraries. Plus JS script support for your specific CPU.
I understand that a browser is a gnu ("a big animal", as the LaTeX
manual stands). But, the very low-level graphics components should,
ideally, be encapsulated. Dunno how JS works; I'm not considering myself
a great programmer (~:
Just look at TenFourFox and the various bug reports and patches Cameron
proposed to mozilla which sometimes got accepted, sometimes ignored.
Most noticeably SKIA noit being interested in BE at all, as well as
issues with Cairo.
I am working on the ArcticFox browser and try to import most of these
fixes ftom TenFourFox to make them available on a browser not limited to
Mac.
But it is a pain and a pity to know "upstream" is diverging more and more.
Currently, ArcticFox has only minor issues compared on PPC to itself
built on Intel or ARM. Help appreciated.
I can assure you of my admiration for such a work. And my thanks.
For me, the only real endiannes is Big-Endian, as were many classic
CPUs, Motorola 68k, classic MIPS, PPC, SPARC, HP-PA.
I hoped Risc-V would be... and think that PPC-le is betrayal like
MIPS-le. Like a BE VAX would have been betrayal! But this is personal.
I have also very much progrmmed for BE during my carreer, M6809,
M68k and PPC; done much low-level VME also. all in C. Around the end, I
had a rather big and complex project (with respect to my skills), with 4
persons involved. We made a cultural revolution: made a review of what
language would be best and chose one which was neither C/C++ nor Java.
The result was excellent: high performance, good readability and 99%
bugs detected at compile time. The language you speak decides in part
the way you think; and this is true also for programing languages and
you learn a lot when you learn a new language; I'm sure we could not
have reached such a result in ~ 3 years, with our original culture of
C/C++ programmers.
I remember a discussion about which of LE and BE was natural, maybe
it was on this list. This purely a question of taste (~:
Never used a MacIntosh, but very many single board computers which
had the cpus mentionned above. Nowadays my laptop has an amd64, like
everybody. But I would be ready to pay more for a ppc or a riscv.
Cheers, and many thanks for your work.
Re: Debian on IBM RS/6000 7248-43p
Le 12/05/2023 à 00:50, Ben Westover a écrit : Arch Linux's unofficial ppc port lists instructions for installing on PReP machines [1], so unless they're inaccurate I would assume Linux still supports PREp. A PREp partition does not contain any filesystem; it is just something on which you put an executable using (e.g.) 'dd -of=/dev/sda1 if=...' . An executable does not need to know how it was loaded. The firmware assumes that a PREp partition contains an executable image, it loads it and executes it. Traditionnally, this was a Linux image, bundled with an initramfs and some code to uncompress them, load them and jump to the kernel with kernel arguments given at build-time. This, of course, can be replaced by the executable image of a known bootloader. The bootloader does not need to know about PREp because it loads kernel and initramfs from another partition. -- Didier
Re: Supported Hardware ?
Le 25/10/2016 06:19, Lennart Sorensen a écrit : That one would be powerpcspe, not powerpc, unless I have misunderstood the e500v2. e300, e500mc, e5500 and e6500 are all normal sane powerpc designs, while e500v1 and e500v2 are the SPE chips that don't have normal powerpc FPUs. Whyever would they be playing with that chip? I would expect them to hit software compatibility problems. I suppose since AmigaOS never really did worry about FPU (most Amigas never had one), a powerpc build that doesn't use the FPU much would run on either, and they could even use math libraries (which I seem to recall AmigaOS always did anyhow) to hide the difference in architecture of the hardware. The only way I see they could be running Debian on that board, is with a custom built kernel with MATH_EMULATION enabled. That might be what they have done. I do see one of the blog pages running powerpcspe on it instead, which makes more sense. Hey. This is something I've been testing for years on SBCs with Freescale MPC8540 and MPC8548E. MPC8540 (e500v1): the kernel must be compiled with -mcpu=8540 (with math emul of course); compiled for generic powerpc, even with math emul, it doesn't run. Then Debian for Powerpc runs OK. Means the illegal FP instructions which are trapped by kernel math emulation are the generic ppc FP instructions, not the e500v2. Those have been running in production for years. MPC8548E (e500v2): compiling the kernel is no problem, but of course Debian for Powerpc doesn't work, and math emul is impossible. The only way is the powerpcspe port. Didn't exist when I needed it and I gave up. Didier
Re: After update, just a black screen
Le 20/05/2020 à 15:33, Mick Bert a écrit : Il 20/05/20 14:30, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz ha scritto: "init=/bin/bash". What the hell - in this mode, it does not recognise keystroke ^C, or ^Z. I started a ping, and I do not know how to interrupt it! That' because you're connected on the console. Busybox has a special command to solve that issue: cttyhack. In your situation, I would try something like 'setsid -c /bin/bash /dev/tty1 2>&1' . /dev/tty1 isn't exactly the same thing as /dev/console. That's my (incomplete) understanding. Didier
Re: About the FreeScale e500 series processor
Hi Bear. I have been running Debian for years on the following embedded PowerPCs: MPC60x (rather old) MPC7457 MPC8540 The MPC8540 has an e500 Version1 core, which is compatible with older PowerPCs, at the condition that FP instructions are emulated in the kernel, because it does not implement FP instructions. But e500v1 is now obsolete and e500v2 features a full set of instructions which are incompatible with older cores: FP instructions but not only, and some other instructions have been removed and are not emulated in the kernel (at least up to 2.6.34). Hence the need for a port to powerpc-linux-gnuspe. BTW, why not powerpcspe-linux-gnu? I am now running this Debian/Lenny port on MPC8548E (e500v2). Big thanks to the people who are working on the port: http://wiki.debian.org/PowerPCSPEPort Didier Bear a écrit : hi, I wanna build a network device with FreeScale MPC8533E PowerQUICC III Processor chipset. But I dont know if the powerpc edition of debian can run on it or not. Is there anyone who can tell me the answer? Or, if the powerpc edition of debian is only for Apple's powerpc processor? And also, is there any FreeScale's processor can run debian-powerpc? thx! -- Bear 2010-09-15 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-powerpc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4c908bf2.7020...@in2p3.fr
