Blog on Apfel hammer

TerminalDrome 0.7.3 released

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We released TerminalDrome 0.7.X with new features. Likes and Audiovisuals.

What’s new in 0.7.3

❤️ Like songs — press Shift+L while a song is playing to mark it as a favorite in Navidrome.
The current song gets a permanent heart (❤️) next to its title in the song list.
Visual feedback in the status bar confirms when a song is liked.
The heart stays visible when switching views or restarting the app.
Keyboard shortcut: Shift+L (L for Like) – easy to remember, doesn’t conflict with Shift+H for help.
With Shift+E you can start the audiovisual mode (like cava) and with ESC you can close while song is playing.

Version 0.6.0 of TerminalDrome released

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A terminal-based music client for Navidrome (and other Subsonic-compatible servers), written in Rust.

Features

What’s new in 0.6.0

🔀 Shuffle Mode — press Shift+S while in any song list (album, playlist, or Jukebox queue) to instantly shuffle and restart playback. The currently playing song panel and progress bar turn magenta so you always know shuffle is active.

What was new in 0.5.x

🎉 Party / Jukebox Mode (Shift+J) — streams your entire library in random order. Songs are fetched from the server in batches in the background, so even a library with tens of thousands of tracks works without loading everything into memory at once.

The new Jukebox Mode plays my entire library

New TerminalDrome Release 0.3.3

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, now that I’ve spent a lot of time working on my Linux PC build — you can read about it here. I’ve turned my attention back to my TerminalDrome software.

The biggest change is the possibility to switch via TAB Key to your playlists.

As you know, I’m a big fan of self-hosting, which is why I host my own music, among other things. And TerminalDrome is the little Navidrome terminal player.

TerminalDrome Features

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m happy to announce that TerminalDrome has been officially added to the crates.io repository. This means you can now install and use TerminalDrome on your system with a simple

cargo install terminaldrome

command. I’ve also added the ability to use playlists in TerminalDrome, which wasn’t available before. You can use the TAB key to switch the left pane to the playlists. In the middle, you’ll see information about the playlist, and on the right, the songs it contains. Otherwise, there were many bug fixes: one was a buffer overflow at the end of a song, which caused the runtime to be recalculated and resulted in a crash. Another was a large number of warnings, which I’ve resolved.

Game paused

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Because I just started to build a new x86-64 Linux Gaming/Coding-Rag, I stopped with Linux on the Powermac G5, for now. But not forever.

Another Webbrowser for Mac OS X 10.5 PPC - BrassMonkey

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Browser is called BrassMonkey and is a fork of legendary Wicknix’s SeaLion from Linux. The version we are talking about is from Nov 2025 but was only available for Intel Mac 10.6 and got now his way to 10.5 PPC. It is also based on the modern UXP Engine like Powerfox (Link) is, and has a new updated code for even better compatibility with logging into websites. It also doesn’t have a JIT Compiler, so script heavy sites will be very slow. But it is written that people on the MacRumours Forums are currently in the process of porting a JIT to Powerfox. Maybe it will also be available for BrassMonkey.

T2/Linux 26.3 “Desktop Edition”

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Embedded Engineering Meets Cross-Architecture Desktop Ambition

T2/Linux has released version 26.3 “Desktop Edition,” marking a significant milestone in delivering a modern, cross-architecture desktop experience.

The distribution distinguishes itself by providing a fully reproducible KDE Plasma Wayland session across nine different CPU architectures, including x86, ARM64, PowerPC, and RISC-V. This achievement is built on T2’s long-standing foundation as a system development environment engineered for strict cross-compilation, architectural correctness, and deterministic builds.

Strange behavior of my PowerMac G5 - it doesn't boot anymore

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone who reads my blog from time to time is familiar with my PowerMac setup. I have two SSDs connected to the internal SATA ports: a 512 GB SATA SSD for Mac OS X 10.5 and a 128 GB SSD for Linux. I also have an NVMe SSD connected to the internal PCI Express x4 port.

The 128 GB SSD for Linux runs Debian 12 SID, and its primary function is to boot the actual Linux distribution from the NVMe SSD. The PowerMac, specifically the Open Firmware, doesn’t have drivers for NVMe, and neither does Mac OS X. Therefore, it boots Grub from the internal SSD to load the correct kernel and partition from the NVMe SSD.

New Version of TerminalDrome

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After nine long months of laziness and overindulgence, I finally sat down again to work on my beautiful terminal client for Navidrome, TerminalDrome, and implemented a few bug fixes. I also made sure it continues to run everywhere and improved the code quality a bit.

I am proud to announce TerminalDrome 0.2.3 for your pleasure.

What has changed in Version 0.2.3?

0.2.3 – Stability & Cross-Architecture Improvements, not visibile.

Fixed

Fixed duplicate selection decrement in navigation logic (on_up)
Fixed potential division-by-zero in progress bar calculation
Hardened time position handling against invalid/NaN values
Improved atomic memory ordering for weak memory architectures (ARM, PPC64)
Prevented uncontrolled async task spawning during album rendering
Improved mpv IPC reconnect handling
Improved temporary directory handling for macOS and Linux

Improved

Switched to single-thread Tokio runtime for better determinism
Reduced async task churn in render path
Improved cross-platform stability (Linux PPC64, Linux x86_64, macOS Intel, macOS ARM)
Better behavior on weak memory-order CPUs
Reduced CPU load during cover rendering

Platform Stability

Tested on:

Poole / Hyde for Bashblog

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

So today I thought about my small apfelhammer.de Powermac G5 Weblog and what else can I do to have more fun with it. And than I decided to try out 11ty or another cool shiny Static Site Generator I barely used in for a while and after a little research, I thought Poole and from this Hyde is still in 2026 a great Blog Theme when one only want to blog and share thoughts so I ported the Hyde Theme to my Bashblog Engine and changed nothing.

PowerFox - A modern browser for PowerPC Macs (Mac OS X 10.5)

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I just stumbled across a new browser that promises to bring a current version of Firefox to Mac OS X 10.5 PowerPC (and Intel).

Attentive readers of my weblog will know that I have a great passion for trying out modern browsers, usually paired with modern Linux PPC distributions, on my PowerPC 64-Bit PowerMac G5 and integrating them into my daily routine. Of course, this is only possible to a limited extent with a computer from 2005, but it is possible.

Epiphany on Powermac G5 Linux

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I just played around a little bit and found out that Gnome Browser Project Epiphany (Gnome Web) is also installable within Arch Linux for PowerPC on my Ppwermac G5. I tried out just to see that it works. But it soon crashes, because OpenGL Rendering is broken. But when you start the Browser in a Terminal with the URL behind, like this:

epiphany https://de.wikipedia.org

than it starts and renders the website and it is pretty usable. Here is a small screenshot I just took:

Welcome to the new server

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article is mainly because I want to know when the server movement is done. I want to say I am moving with apfelhammer to another server, not the server to another place. I want to leave the old server behind me.

If you can read this post, you are on the new server :-) Otherwise, DNS is cached.

(webmention-sender-test)

Gaming on my Powermac G5

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My Powermac was a Powerbeast back in the days, but for gaming, Macs are always and forever the wrong choice, til today. But with the stock NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE I am able to play Doom 3 (one of my favourite Ego-Shooters of all time) on low settings or Quake III Arena pretty good and pretty fast.

And I was curious if I can install dhewm3 on PowerPC Linux to play Doom 3 with this modern implementation for the old game. But with the one from the package manager, there were no luck. It had a problem with the menue, I think with the Fond and this is a known problem with other than x86 builds. It soon after start crashed. So I deviced to built in from scratch and that worked. After some tweaks I am able to start Doom3, but it doesn’t work as expected. The graphic is completely broken and I think it has something to do with Mesa and 3D and Drivers and so on.

New Firefox 145 and the 32 Bit Build

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Master hacker René Rebe, known to everyone for T2/SDE Linux, writes in a recent article about the media’s proclamation of the end of 32-bit Firefox—and verifies this claim on his own system.

Of course, the world isn’t black and white, and René describes how, although…

while Mozilla has ended official 32-bit Linux builds for the upstream binary release, but the underlying source code remains portable. Downstream projects such as T2 SDE Linux, which pride themselves on building Firefox natively for every architecture from i686 and PowerPC G5 to MIPS and RISC-V, already have fresh 32-bit builds running. In fact, the broader ecosystem of independent distributions continues to demonstrate that so-called “obsolete” architectures can live long, productive lives when supported by efficient cross-compilation frameworks.

Compiling Classic Thunderbird Client Epyrus for PPC64 [UPDATE 3] - It works!

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Long time ago I found out that someone started a project for Classic Thunderbird, because they were not really happy about the newly established way it goes from then. And on PowerPC based Linux, actual Thunderbird will not build because

Warnung: Kann "libicui18n.so=74-64" nicht auflösen (eine Abhängigkeit von "thunderbird")

libiciu cannot be built. There are some alternatives like Claws-Mail but this is really old, feels really old. It works but it is not in the actual repo of Power ARCH but you can compile it easy by yourself. Anyways. Because Epyrus is based on older classic Thunderbird, there is a change I can compile it on actual Arch with Python 2.7. I give it a try.

Long time not seen...

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear friends of PowerPC Linux, Unix and especially the Powermac G5, I’ve not written since quite a time. The reason was my other Webproject [¹] which I managed to melt with another Website and beside that, move it into a Docker Container and run it and adopt everything and so on and on and on… you know - from stick to wood like someone says. :-)

But what I want to say is that I am using Arch POWER ppc64 Linux now for quite some time every day and while I am listening to Navidrome streamed MP3 [²] in my TerminalDrome Client or do some Webstuff with Firefox or sending Mails via Calws-Mail, I am absolutely happy and it never crashed or something like that. It works so well.

How to install Xfce Desktop on ArchLinux ArchPOWER ppc64

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As I wrote yesterday, the new ArchPOWER Linux for PowerPC 64 works like charme and with big thanks to (Kernel/Linux)-Hacker René Rebe, Firefox is working on POWER-Architecture (and much more) again after years. So you can use a modern Browser if you want.

But in the last post, I only described how you get your base system up and running while booting from usb pen drive. But you want more :-) A GUI I bet. So if you have a running instance, or when you are still in the live environment of the booted usb pen drive, you can chroot into the freshly installed ARCH Linux and can perfom different tasks. E.g. install a GUI. While the Powermac is not the fastest machine in 2025 anymore and a lot of packages are not available for ppc64, XFCe is a good idea for a good looking and modern desktop environment. My mac has the stock nVidia Geforce 6600GS graphicsboard so we need the driver for this to have 2d-acceleration. This is important, otherwise the gui is not useful because it is too slow.

ArchPOWER Linux for PPC64(/32)

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My bigfat Powermac G5 Workstation running ArchPOWER 64 while compiling Claws-Mail under XCFE and running TerminalDrome

Because of a friendly comment by Powerlinux user Matias, I am willing to try out ArchPOWER Linux for PPC (Link) again. ArchPOWER is an unofficial Port of ARCH Linux for the PowerPC Architecture: It supports: powerpc64le (>=POWER8), powerpc (>=604), powerpc64 (>=POWER4+/G5 & PS3) and espresso (WiiU SMP).

Speed of light - NVMe SSD in a Powermac G5

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I told you the other day that my PowermacG5 owns an NVMe-SSD-Adapter as a PCI-Express Card with a 1 TB NVME-SSD. That runs great, here is the Benchmark:

[arch@ARCHLINUX ~]$ sudo pacman -S hdparm
Abhängigkeiten werden aufgelöst …
Nach in Konflikt stehenden Paketen wird gesucht …

Pakete (1) hdparm-9.65-2

Gesamtgröße des Downloads:             0,10 MiB
Gesamtgröße der installierten Pakete:  0,24 MiB

:: Installation fortsetzen? [J/n]
:: Pakete werden empfangen …
hdparm-9.65-2-po...   101,0 KiB   394 KiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
(1/1) Schlüssel im Schlüsselbund werden geprüft    [######################] 100%
(1/1) Paket-Integrität wird überprüft              [######################] 100%
(1/1) Paket-Dateien werden geladen                 [######################] 100%
(1/1) Auf Dateikonflikte wird geprüft              [######################] 100%
(1/1) Verfügbarer Festplattenspeicher wird erm...  [######################] 100%
:: Paketänderungen werden verarbeitet …
(1/1) Installiert wird hdparm                      [######################] 100%
:: Post-transaction-Hooks werden gestartet …
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

[arch@ARCHLINUX ~]$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
Timing cached reads:   2258 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1129.63 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1384 MB in  3.00 seconds = 461.12 MB/sec

Yes, 1129 MB/Sec, bäm!, this is what PCIE 1.0 4.0 Slot can do. :-) Nicenstein, in a 2005 Computer.

T2/Linux compiling errors

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hello and good morning, I’m back at my Powermac G5, playing around a bit with T2/Linux (all articles).

I recently reported that a current version of Firefox is capable of running on PPC64, making this distro the only one that allows this. Everyone else is having major problems with Firefox right now. Although I assume René, the maintainer of T2, is sending his patches upstream. He does a lot for the community.

Update on Apfelhammer.de - Bashblog with webmention and isso comments

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

So, this post is an update to my “weblog engine” Bashblog. This is a Shellscript wich renders my weblog in static html files, like all the other static website generators like Jekyll or Pelikan or you name it do. But there is a difference: for bb.sh you only need the standard linux tools like awk, sed etc. pp., and this works with a nice css file out of the box really good.

A picture of my Powermac G5

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My Powerhouse :-)

A picture of my Powermac G5

Powermac G5 11,2 with
2 GHz Dual Core IBM PPC970 CPU
12 GB DDR2 Ram
PCIe NVMe-SSD with 1 TB SSD
Apple Cinema HD 23" Display
Original Keyboard and Mouse

Allow Apps From Anywhere macOS 15.2 Sequoia

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

So, the other day I installed a media server to stream my long lost MP3-Archive like it’s Spotfiy, over the air to my Smartphone while I wear Headphones etc. pp and therefore I tested a lot of apps. I ran into the issue that macOS 15 does not let you device to open an unverified app like on the macOS releases before, it is a way harder. But the easiest solution I found is this, type in the terminal:

Apfelhammer.de goes Indieweb

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As I mentioned on my several domains before, I am a great fan of the so called indieweb were you link each other in mentions and talk about topics and you do this on your domain or your website, not on social media pots were your data and your stories and thoughts are trapped. Trapped at them.

So I configured my domain apfelhammer.de as part of the indieweb. I think I can get webmentions and I am part of the indiewebring.

App Defaults 2024

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since I installed an RSS-Reader like its 2007, I read my friends again. That’s a thing I am really thankful for. And there, over at pfotenhauers frittiert.es, I read a blogpost about App Defaults. It’s about People who show other people what they are using for tools ’n apps on a daily base for working and living and in private.

I will do that, too.

App Defaults

Defaults

Mail Client: mutt, Mail.app, Thunderbird
Mail Server: self hosted, Linux
Notes: Notizen.App
To-Do: “Hey Siri, erinnere mich an…”
iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app
Photo Management: Apple Photos
Calendar: Google Calendar via Calendar.app
Cloud File Storage: iCloud, (in reality I don’t like clouds)
RSS service: NetNewsWire on iCloud :-)
RSS client: NetNewsWire on iOS and macOS, SeaLion on Powermac G5
Contacts: Kontakte.App
Browser: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge,
Chat: WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Discord, irssi
Bookmarks: I don’t use Bookmarks anymore
Read It Later: I don’t use those kind of tools
Word Processing: Word, Pages, Markdown Formatting Textfiles
Spreadsheets: Excel, Numbers
Presentations: Powerpoint, Keynote
Shopping Lists: Notizen.App
Meal Planning: Notizen.App - Brot; Butter; Knoblauch
Budgeting and Personal Finance: DKB Banking App
News: NTV.App but I decided to not read news of the day anymore, just to protect my mental health.
Music: Spotify
Podcasts: Overcast
Password Management: iCloud Keychain

Additional categories:

Social Media: Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram
Code Editor: nano, vim, neovim, textmate
Blog: ghost cms (selfhosted), try different things like BashBlog (selfhosted)
Terminal: Alacritty, iTerm2, warp
Non-Smoking: Rauchfrei - since I quit smoking I track the amount of cigarettes, money and days.

All the apps are not clickable because I am too lazy to link everything. If you are interested, I think you can google or duckduckgo for it.

Backslash, German iMac Keyboard and OpenFirmware

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had problems typing the backslash “" and bar “|” on my iMac keyboard when in the OpenFirmware user interface.

A picture of my iMac G3 while in Open Firmware

The “" key on US iMac keyboards seems to produce keycode 57 (in X11). There is no key on the German keyboard that produces keycode 57. There is one with keycode 58, the “#” key.

Claws-Mail 4.3.1 ArchPOWER Linux successfully compiled for PPC64

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Due to the lack of a good graphical email client ¹ for my Arch POWER Linux Distro (Arch Linux for PowerPC), I tried several things and ended up with claws-mail. But it is not installable or not existing in the repos of pacman for powerpc. So I dcided to compile it by myself.

Claws-Mail 4.3.1 just compiled successfully on my Powermac G5.

claws-mail first window, first start

FeeDOS 1.4 is there

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

FreeDoS 1.4 Screenshot by freedos.org

As you all know, I’m a big fan of vintage computers. In addition to an iMac G3, a C64, and an Amiga 500/1200, I also run an MS-DOS PC with Windows 3.11 and networking capabilities. To enable file sharing, I have a small Samba 1 server running.

So it’s all the more exciting to see that the fantastic FreeDOS project has released a new version. FreeDOS 1.4 is here.

Fienix Linux for PPC Computers

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The other day I stumbled across Fienix Linux. It is a Distribution maintained by one man, Casey Cullen. It is based on debian, but with focus on powerpc first. I just tried to install it on my Powermac G5. And it works great!

Fienix Linux 6.0.1 on my Powermac G5, on real Hardware.

My Setup in this machine as follows:

Fienix Linux seems to be dead

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I find it quite sad because I only recently got to know Fienix Linux, even though it has been around for a long time. And I think it’s absolutely great because it works better than any other Linux on the Powermac G5 that I’ve tried so far:

Graphics acceleration
modern web browser

But unfortunately the package sources are dead, this Linux is based on Debian SID and uses APT. The Fienix source server is unreachable and there is no alternative.

Firefox 128-ESR on PPC64 Powermac G5

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since I own the Powermac G5 and play around with it, I want to install a modern Browser and therefor, I want to run Firefox on it. But it is not possible. I tried different Linux Distros like Debian 12 PPC64, T2/Linux by Rene Rebe and even some special builts of ARCH for PPC64 - but I had no luck. No one had luck and even the Debian Mailinglist said it is not possible to built Firefox for PPC64 at this time. I even wrote about that.

Hello ArchPOWER Linux for PPC64

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In a nice comment from Matias, he told me he is using ArchPOWER Linux, an unofficial Build of Arch Linux for PowerPC, PPC64, PPC and PPCle for the Power8 Architecture etc. pp.; If I remember correctly, I stumbled across this Linux Distro while I researched for the best Linux for my Powermac G5, but maybe because I was at the beginning of my Linux journey on these machines, I found it to heavy or something else told me not to try. I don’t know but it is not important anymore, because I installed ArchPOWER Linux current on my NVMe-SSD in the Powermac, multi-booting with T2 Linux, Debian 12 SID, Adelie Linux and Fienix Linux. :-)

Hello T2/Linux 25.04 - I switched back to 12.24

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Man, I am a little bit frustrated right now. Everytime a new release of T2/Linux is going online, I am really happy to try it out on my Powermac G5. I download it and dd it to a USB Stick (here I explain how to boot a PPC Mac from USB) and than boot the Powermac via OpenFirmware from that USB Stick and everything works like charme. Like I exspect it.

Hello World

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is my first entry and I like the simplicity of bashlogging via one shellscript and the whole bashblog-number, a lot.

I will soon write a new css file to make it more… maybe pop-art.

Sincerely, Jan

[Update] I upgraded the CSS. Attached you’ll see the old design.

Hello World Again - Apfelhammer.de back online

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am back - because my internet provider (Pÿur) cut off my home server connection (it is this ipv4 ipv6 thing) from one day to another without getting me informed, my websites were all down. So I moved to another server but I find it really overbloated to host such a small bunch of html websites on a big hoster.

Now, I am back but ISSO is not working and maybe other things are also broken.

How do I run update-grub from another Partition or a LiveCD?

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As you know my Setup, I will shortly explain again. In my Powermac G5 there is an SATA-SSD as a replacement for the old spinning Apple HDD. On this SSD I installed Mac OX 10.5 and also Debian SID for PPC, to get the Partition-Scheme and GRUB installed.

I also built in a NVMe-SSD with 1 TB because the Powermac11,2 has PCI-Express Slots like it is standard nowadays. The OpenFirmware in the Powermac doesn’t know what an NVMe-SSD is and therefore can’t recognize it or boot it. Also Mac OS X 10.5 doesn’t see the device. The technic is too young and there are no drivers, that is the reason for that.

How To Boot Powermac from USB

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There are many different mentions in the web. Some say it is impossible to boot Powermacs from USB, others says: only PowermacG5 from 7,3 Revision are able to boot from USB and the third party says: every Powermac is bootable.

And because I own this late and great Powermac G5 11,2 and I don’t want to always burn a CD/DVD everytime I try a new Linux or something else out, I invesitagted a little bit further: the third statement is correct: every Powermac can boot from USB.

I hate it when...

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

… interesting topics in the internet are videos that should be blog posts. I hate it so much. It rises up that every time when I look through the net for a specific topic, I get a YouTube Video instead of a blog post. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE doing videos off of clearly to describe topics - when it is better for the audicence and every other people when they write about.

ISSO Comments with Bashblog

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Comments belongs to the website. So I newly established this weblog and I am a great fan of comments. Because were is the place to talk about a topic? Directly under the topic, right. I now publish with a simple Shell-Script (Bashblog) and there is no commenting system built in, the author helped out with integrating Disqus, which is known for being a wideley used commenting hoster.

And there is the point to talk: I think comments belong to the commenters and to the website were the comments are said, but definitely comments are no big data and therefore should not be outsourced to a third-party company like disqus is.

Late and great Mini-ITX Build?

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I lastly saw this video about a company who invents Mini-ITX Cases for PCs, especially for Gaming PCs. And I saw this great case ¹. The Case is so neat and everything fits so well. The case is small and can stand up to not use too much space on the Desk which I really like. It reminds me on my Mac Pro 6,1 - also known as Trashcan - which was an really great mini-ITX Computer before it was cool. I would still use one but you can’t upgrade and therefore it is way much powerconsumption (compared to actual computers) for no reason so an actual Mac Mini M4 is all you need for everyday computing.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 with modern Browser

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As you can see in the screenshot, I am visiting both my weblog and amazon.de Websites with the Powermac G5 2,0 GHz. This is only possible because there is a relative modern webbrowser (2022) by user wicknix, built upon TenFourFox.

InterWebPPC: Mozilla for Power Macintosh

So with this webbrowser the old 20 years old Powermac is able to visit modern websites like Amazon. No, I dont like amazon, but is is an example. Youtube also works, but loads a lot longer.

New Release Of T2/Linux

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

T2/Linux 24.12 with XFCE Desktop on Powermac G5

As you know, this weblog is about my 2005 Powermac G5 and how to use it in 2024 soon 2025 as a normal computing device. I installed different Linux Distros on an 1 TB NVMe Device while computing with 12 GB-Ram.

And today reached me the information that famous René Rebe did released T2/Linux 12.2024 [1]. They are pleased to announce T2 24.12 as a major update with a total of 37 pre-compiled base install ISOs for various Glibc, Musl and uClibc combinations are available for 25 CPU ISAs:

New Release of TerminalDrome on Github

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since I recently discovered how relaxing programming can be, I’ve been tinkering with my Navidrome-compatible terminal client called TerminalDrome almost every day.

I’ve now integrated a new feature, which I’ve moved to Main:

A simple search function:

Press slash / and the search will open.
Enter the search term, press Enter, and you’ll see the search results in the right panel.
It’s neither alphabetically sorted nor otherwise organized.
Additionally, there’s a feature in the leftmost panel where you can jump directly to the beginning of the respective artist by pressing a letter of your choice. So if I press D, I’ll land on D.A.F., or Q on Queens Of The Stone Age—you get it?

My TerminalDrome CLient in Search Mode

Release: T2 Linux 25.4 'It Only Does Everything'

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of crazy things happen right now. A few minutes ago I reported about the living sign of Fienix Linux after the APT Repo down and now I see there is a new version of latest and greatest T2 Linux (ver. 25.4) from Rene Rebe.

With a total of 17 pre-compiled base install ISOs for various Glibc, Musl and uClibc combinations are available for 12 CPU ISAs: Alpha, ARM(64), HPPA64, IA64, MIPS64, PowerPC(64), RISCV64, SPARC64, i586, x86-64. On most architectures the release still boots with as little as 512MB of RAM or even less, and ISO downloads are less than 2GB for base Wayland desktop with Firefox.

Second Post

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The rest of the text file is a Markdown blog post. The process will continue as soon as you exit your editor. It works like charme, like a big software solution but it is only shell scritpting with standard unix tools. amazing!

Sorbet Leopard 10.5.9

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There are quite a few Powermac Enthusiast around the world, like I am. They are using the Powermac G5 for day-to-day work and I think this is pretty cool, even when I think we need to go green as fast as possible in the reason of power consumption, I will give it a try. My G5 doesnt need more than 250 Watts even with the Cinema HD 23" Display in use.

Status of Firefox on PPC64 Big Endian

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

So yesterday was the release ouf 24.12 T2/Linux and the maintainer, creator and mastermind behind, René Rebe, were at a lifestream on youtube and twitch. So I played around with T2 on my Powermac G5 and listened to the stream and had a small chat with him. The most important part is an actual browser on that machine so I asked for the actual status of firefox.

René replied that the problems with big endian still exist and occours so there is no Firefox for Big Endian Machines at the moment. Firefox builts well on all little endian processors, but not on the big ones. There is no better answer at this time, but I hope he can do something when he have the time. Because to make that clear: there is not a big audience who is working on big endian ppc64 processors like my 970MP is in the world and I believe he get’s not enough feedback and attention for his work for the open source community. But this is another part.

Still crosscompiling

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I own this late and great Powermac11,2 Powermac G5 Dual Core 2,0 GHz and I love this machine for being what it is: a great retrobattle station and also a sexy workstation. It is so clean, no cables, everything can be accessed easily.

Even the PowerPC 970MP ¹ Processors are known for getting really hot, the machine fans are not loud even under heavy load while compiling latest e.g. Firefox Version 133 for PPC64. And this is the moment were I want to setup something to crosscompile. Because I don’t want to run the Powermac all day and all night with 78 degree Celcius all the time while compiling and I don’t want to consump so much electrical energy.

T2 Linux is fucking amazing

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

So yesterday I found out that with the PPC64 Version Firefox is working and this is a dealbreaker, a gamechanger. Because of a modern Browser, you can use this old computer nearly productive. I can webmail (even Googlemail), I can spotify, I can Youtube. I can do a lot of modern things only because the browser is working.

My Powermac G5 Desktop with XFCE 4 and some Terminal Windows.

T2/Linux 25.10 'Never Obsolete' is there - It runs Firefox 143.0.1 on PowerPC

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Master-Hacker René Rebe has published his newest version of T2/Linux, an SDE Linux with the most CPU Architechture support in the world. It is also the most active and most actual Linux Distro as you can see on distro watch and other sites.

I installed this new version on my Powermac G5 Workstation and it works like charme.

Here you can find the direct download for ppc, ppc64 or ppc64/32*

I installed the 64/32 Bit Variante, because it is optimized for the 970 Processor which works in the Powermac G5.

TerminalDrome 0.2.0 is available

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am proud to announce the release of TerminalDrome 0.2.0 as a feature-rich stable version to the public. It is still alpha but it works on a daily basis here on my Powermac G5 or the Mac Mini M4.

TerminalDrome Splash Screen

There are compiled binaries available for arm64, ppc64 and armhf. But TerminalDrome will build on every Linux with Rust and Cargo.

TerminalDrome is evolving

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My little Terminal Navidrome Project TerminalDrome is evolving and works a little bit better from day to day. So, what is working?

safes the state of the panes to come back later
in pane 4 it shows the elapsed time and a small bar is going to 100%
it plays the songs of an album from 1 to last

What does not work:

it won’t changes the now playing bar when a new song is playing

This is a screenshot of my real Powermac G5 running TerminalDrome in the wild.

TermNavi is renamed in TerminalDrome

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Because there’s already a Terminal Navidrome client called NaviTerm, and I don’t really like my name TermNavi, I decided to rename my software TerminalDrome. Of course, that sounds completely stupid, but at least it’s better than a copy.

I think my software will soon become famous.

Oh, and it doesn’t even work properly yet. :-)

Ressources

TerminalDrome Github Repo

TermNavi Terminal Navidrome Client ppc64

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

So the other day I tried to connect to my Navidrome MP3 Streaming Server, I call it “Spotify at Home”, via Webinterface to listen to some music, but there were no way to do this. The Webbrowsers available are too old. Sad.

So I decided to programm a really small Navidrome Terminal Client called TermNavi (yes I know… need better name) to listen to my MP3. And what shall I say? The first implementation is ready. I tested and successfully compiled on aarch64 (my MacMini M4) and the legendary Powermac G5 with ARCH Linux or Debian Sid ppc64.

Update to Fienix Linux

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As I wrote in a few articles before, I am a big fan of Fienix Linux because it works absolutely amazing on my Powermac G5, it can even render complex and modern Websites like my other Weblog (Ghost CMS) and all the big and modern new Websites.

However, as I continued to use Fienix, I found out that I couldn’t install any updates or other software packages. After some research, I discovered that the Fienix APT Repo was down. I asked at the corresponding youtube channel and even at the Website, but there was no answer.

Using OpenFirmware on Powermacs

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There is always the discussion around if the Powermacs are able to boot from USB or not and I can say: every Powermac G5 is able to boot from USB Thumbdrive. So it is quite easy to dd an ISO of Linux or Leopard to an USB-Drive and boot-up the Powermac G5 with it. But also older Macs. Older Roms. Older Edlers.

Accessing Open Firmware

Method I: At the chime, hold down the Option key. The Boot Picker comes up. Press Control + Z to switch to Open Firmware. Method II: At the chime, hold down Command + Option + O + F until you’ve arrived at the Open Firmware prompt.

New Version 0.2.2 of TerminalDrome

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I just finished the work on TerminalDrome 0.2.2 and I am really proud of it, because I don’t know nothing about Rust programming language but the Terminal NaviDrome Client is running very well :-)

TerminalDrome started, Cover Art, no artist or album chosen

Whats is new?

Implemented cover art: terminaldrome is downloading the cover art of the album if available and convert it to ASCII :-)
Album Scrolling: while in album pane, there were no scrolling implemented and when there were more than 5 albums, you would not see them.
fixed mute button
updated splash screen :-)
a lot of other improvements and fixes

What else?

Tested on:

New Kernel 6.12.5 for my Powermac G5

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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

Configuration

Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 +0000

Nivis-specific options are placed below [extra] in the site’s config.toml. Zola’s own settings, including feeds, taxonomies, and Markdown highlighting, stay at the top level.

Search

AIGC disclosure: This section was written with AI assistance and checked against Zola’s documentation and local builds.

The example site’s config.toml exposes Zola’s native build_search_index switch, disabled by default. Enabling it adds a search button after the back button in the upper-right toolbar; the homepage has a standalone search button. The input expands horizontally and pushes the back button to the left, while results appear beneath it. On narrow screens the input uses a second toolbar row so every button remains accessible. CSS controls layout and transitions, including reduced-motion support. The following settings generate JSON containing titles, descriptions, and untruncated body text:

Getting Started

Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 +0000

AIGC disclosure: The Nivis guides in this example site were drafted in part with AIGC assistance and checked against the theme source and a local Zola build.

Requirements

Nivis requires Zola 0.23.4 or later. Check the installed version before starting:

zola --version

Git is needed for the recommended submodule installation. Python 3 is only needed for the optional math-processing tools.

Installation

From the root of an existing Zola site, add Nivis below themes/:

Markdown Example

Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 +0000

AIGC disclosure: This Markdown example was generated with Gemini 3 and reviewed as part of the Nivis documentation.

Text Basics

You can make text bold or italic. You can also use ~~strikethrough~~ or highlight inline code variables.

Headings

Acknowledge that we recommend using h1 (in markdown, single #) only for the title (that is, the title attribute in front matter). The titles in post content should start with h2.

h3

h4

h5 and h6 are not recommended to use. (Actually I didn’t implement a style for them lol) Try use lists to replace them.

Special Pages

Tue, 01 Jan 1980 00:00:00 +0000

Nivis can link to five site sections: posts, about, archives, categories, and friend links. Their navigation switches are independent, but enabled routes must have the content or data expected by their templates.

All sections are enabled by default:

[extra.sections]
posts = true
about = true
archive = true
links = true

Set only the entries that need to differ from the defaults. For example:

[extra.sections]
links = false

Key	Navigation target	Required source when enabled
`posts`	`/posts/`	`content/posts/_index.md`
`about`	`/about/` and the sidebar action	`content/about/index.md`
`archive`	`/archive/`	`content/archive/index.md` and the posts section
`tags`	`/tags/`	Top-level Zola `tags` taxonomy with rendering enabled
`links`	`/links/`	`content/links/index.md` and `data/links.toml`

Hiding a section removes theme navigation but does not delete its content.