Powermacg5 on Apfel hammer

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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