lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Boris Reinhard <reinhard.boris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's complicated, for various reasons some stuff works while some can only
run due to extensive workarounds, with heavy performance compromises or
doesn't run at all.

You have to keep in mind ppc macs are only supported on community effort,
ppl do not get paid anymore to fix stuff for our old ppc Macs. That is why
we need testing, to locate issues as good as we can and hopefully bring it
to someones attention via various means, someone who can actually do
something about it.

The hardware pool for that however and manpower is not that huge and even
if you have that part covered how to translate it into an actual progress
is another matter entirely.

It is my understanding we on ppc Macs basically gain mostly from stuff on
the side, stuff ppl do on the side of their work they actually get paid for
or mostly in their spare time on the side, as you probably can imagine that
is not ideal to get things fixed as ppl have to actually look into it and
simply stating an issue is not even close to having it fixed and it wont
magically fix itself either.

There are few ppl left interested and able to look into ppc mac related
issues. Maybe there are much more but I feel like there is a bit of a
communication struggel so a person who located an issue might not be able
to get in direct contact with the correct someone who could help or that
someone is busy with much higher priority work and eventually things are
forgotten or dragged out over years.

The ppc kernel devel or other lists where parts that come up now and then
on ppc issues, eg. mesa or nouveau, have a certain procedure and lingo to
it, certain requirements, to the outsider, everyone not familiar with
development of such things or the way things and ppl are connected there
and used to work and communicate in these circles have basically really
slim chances to participate or correctly bring attention to specific issues
that would need some looking into by someone in the know, also without
stepping on someones toe.

Ppl far more experienced than me don't even seem to post there, I can only
imagine they are facing a similar dilemma, a wrongly or badly drafted post
there could easily do more harm than good.

There are some brave enthusiasts however who every now and then pop up, but
they can only do so much on their own,.. To some this might come as a
surprise but that reminding Amiga community, did a lot that also aided our
ppc mac community. Recently I saw a post where they actually raised a
bounty (collected money) to hire an external developer for work on
optimizing video codecs with altivec instructions to gain performance on
ppc systems, imagine that.

I remember around the year of 2006 or so I was reading about how Linus
Torvalds himself supposedly was running a Power Mac G5, ppl assumed they
would get fixes, well guess what, not even the king of linux cared enough
to see this through (granted if it even was at all true and he was using
such a system, we do not even know to what extend), Power Mac G5 with
Nvidia fx5200 with nouveau, no fun at all, no way more typical Mac users
could use such a system under linux in any meaningful way. :(

Of course there is always more to it, ppl grow older, have kids, lots of
newer and more interesting stuff to spend their time on and of course the
actual work to make ends meat and hopefully have enough time for as much of
everything else as possible. But still I can't help but feel sad about the
unearthed potential of those late ppc Macs, which in many cases likely are
going to waste quite literally.

Grüße
boris

ps. on the rage128 issue try to enforce pci and disable agp transfer, so
far I had to do this for radeon and nouveau cases to get somewhat of a
stable sytem.

It's all there: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCKnownIssues

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ

null <meets@xxxxxx> schrieb am Mi., 11. März 2015 22:55:

> Hi,
>
> Sorry to disturb your methods, I am putting the order from first to last
> and answering at
> the bottom.
>
> On Wed, 11 Mar 2015 14:20:15 -0700
> Walter Lapchynski <wxl@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 1:42 PM, Mari <saltycat77@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > But I am disappointed by the lack of PPC support-they are old computers
> > > people like to keep. Its mainly the issue with the old ATI rage Pro 128
> > > cards which is slowing down the install and keeping it from running
> > > optimally (it should, in my opinion, run at least as well as OS X
> Tiger does
> > > and, in fact, should run faster).  While there seems to be a fix out
> there
> > > that Debian still maintains, Ubuntu dropped support for the PPC some
> time
> > > ago and I had trouble compiling the necessary files for installation
> on the
> > > powermac. I'm sure I will sort it out eventually but its clearly not
> for the
> > > novice.
> > >
> > > I wonder if there might be a way to maintain a Lubuntu repo for these
> old
> > > PPC computers, since Lubuntu is great for older hardware.
>
> > Changes in Debian get synced downstream to Ubuntu. Where do you think
> > the fix is?
>
>
> Doesn't xserver-xorg-video-r128 work? This is what is supposed to work for
> ATI Rage Pro
> 128:
> https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo
>
> I see the package in the list of files for PPC:
> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/trusty/daily/20150219/
> trusty-alternate-powerpc.list
>
> Perhaps some "dri" or "libdri" version 1 would not be available anymore ??
>
> So? Mari, what would be missing you think? And why should it be faster
> than the operating
> system built for this architecture? (On a chan recently I've been told
> that Linux boxes
> dont make old Apple machines as optimally as the original OS'es, but I
> don't know that, I
> am not a Mac user).
>
> Best regards,
> Mélodie
>
>
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