New Kernel 6.12.5 for my Powermac G5
I plugged in that great NVMe SSD into my Powermac G5 because he supports PCI-Express (Version 1.0) and there is a 4x Speed Port that is unused (the x16 is for the Graphicscard) and now I ran a 1 TB NVMe-SSD in this Powermac and it is doing great. Because due the lack of drivers, Open Firmware is unable to boot from thos NVMe-SSDs, he is able to boot from a normal 2,5" SSD on the SATA-Port. So I installed the /boot/grub parts to that SSD and therefor it loads the Operating System from the NVMe :-) This is working quite well and I run
- Debian 12
- T2/SDE Linux
- Adélie Linux
for PowerPC 64 PPC64 plattform. I even write this article on that machine while on Debian 12 doing an
apt update && apt upgrade, running SeaLion Firefox and listening to music. Okay, it is not the
performance of a late and great 128 Core Threadripper, but it is quite impressive what this machine
from 2005 is able to do in the end of 2024.
powermac:~$ uname -a
Linux powermac 6.12.5-powerpc64 #1 SMP Debian 6.12.5-1 (2024-12-15) ppc64 GNU/Linux
I installed 12 GB-Ram and that NVMe-SSD in the System. It has a 2 GHz PPC970MP Dualcore CPU and the original Apple 23" Cinema Display. I like that setup, typing is done via the famous Keycron K2 Keyboard.
Actually, I have no glue what can I do to get things crosscompiled. Firefox for PowerPC is broken and epiphany is running with a white screen, doesnt load on Debian. There is no actual browser for PowerPC, what I really dislike. I now use SeaLion (Version 33.4) and it is surprisingly good, even github loads and a lot of other new websites. It is usable.
Tags: powermacg5, debian, powerpc64, ppc64
Ressources
- Adelie Linux: https://www.adelielinux.org/
- Fresh Install T2/Linux: https://t2sde.org/kb/8/?kb/8
- Debian 12 SID: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/12.0/ppc64/
- Linux on PowerPC Computers: https://thahipster.de/linux-auf-dem-powermac-g5/
- SeaLion on Github: https://github.com/wicknix/SeaLion/releases/tag/33.4.0