How To Boot Powermac from USB
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.
But it is not so easy like we knew it from Intel/x86 Machines. Press a button and it boots. Because this is a Powermac with a PowerPC CPU and therefore it uses Open Firmware as an BIOS alternative. Open Firmware was far ahead of it's time with great features, but it is a cryptical terminal. :-) So far - so good.
Firefox 128-ESR on PPC64 Powermac G5
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.
And now, the other day, I tried Adelie Linux PPC64 and et voila: I fucking could start Firefox and tested some Websites like youtube.com and it worked. So I made a screenshot because I could not believe myself. I totally hope I can use Firefox sooner than later on the other Distros too.
Firefox 128 ESR running on top of LXQT Adelie Linux Powerpc 64 Powermac G5
Sincerely, Jan
Tags: powermacg5, firefox, ppc64, linux
Status of Firefox on PPC64 Big Endian
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.
Debian also faces the problem of not building firefox for ppc/64, but they have other important things to do than to fix that.
I know there were patches from oracle for big endian firefox but I cant find the repository anymore. Maybe these patches and the Void Patches could do some important thing? [UPDATE] I found the patches for firefox.
I bet biggest problem are the people at firefox who doesnt care about big endian firefox builts for ppc64 because it is not important.
Ressources
- New Release Of T2/Linux
- Oracle Patches for Firefox
- PPC 750 Void Linux Firefox Patches
- void-packages-ppc750/srcpkgs/firefox/patches/big-endian-image-decoders.patch
- Debian Build Status Firefox
Tags: t2linux, powermacg5, linux, firefox
ISSO Comments with Bashblog
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.
And here is the point were isso enters the game. Isso is a commenting server similar to Disqus, but were you host your own data at yourself, on your own server, here at apfelhammer.de
And now I integrated it into my bashblog.
And it is up and running now.
So please feel free to comment:
- no name needed
- no email needed
- just your input
But because of this, everytime someone is commenting, I'll get an email and have to moderate the comment. So when you comment, it could take a while, that's because I am lazy sometimes :-)
Thank you, Jan
New Release Of T2/Linux
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: