Topics

46

Operating Systems and Porting / [DEV] Testing out Fedora 37

« on: August 22, 2022, 08:26:37 am »

Fedora 37 looks very promising. The 5.19 kernel is still buggy at the time of this writing so I fallback to the 5.18.17 (of Fedora 36). The 5.19.3-300 runs perfectly fine now

My first impression is how MUCH MORE responsive mutter of GNOME 43 has become. The GNOME shell is quite snappy just like of the old days of GNOME 3.38.

Many apps have been ported to GTK4 and libadwaita and I expect more apps to follow in the GNOME 44.

47

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Rocky Linux 9.0 is out folks!

« on: July 14, 2022, 11:43:13 am »

Source: https://rockylinux.org/news/rocky-linux-9-0-ga-release/

48

Applications and Porting / [NEWS] Golang optimizes index function for ppc64le/power9

« on: May 29, 2022, 08:37:30 pm »

Archana Ravindar has done a great job with changes to internal/bytealg of golang. This change brings ~30% perf boost for the index function.


Source: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/7ca1e2aa56f23b1766e8f5f65c431d18abd58985?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

49

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Red Hat Enterprise 9 is out

« on: May 21, 2022, 08:26:19 pm »

A conservative distro with focus on “enterprise” (or whatever that means). Notable changes:

- Kernel 5.14
- More up-to-date languages stack such as Ruby, Python, PHP
- GNOME 40 (yup very slow in term of mutter animation)

Don’t you know you could apply for individual developer license?

50

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] AlmaLinux 8.6 is out

« on: May 18, 2022, 12:17:53 am »

Whilst Rocky Linux has not yet announced any support for OpenPOWER, the Alma Linux continues to excel with support for ppc64le

URL: https://almalinux.org/blog/almalinux-86-stable-is-now-available/

51

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] NVIDIA open sources their driver (from Turin onward)

« on: May 11, 2022, 06:10:20 pm »

Source: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-releases-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/

This is BIG! Though the driver is not tested against ppc64be or ppc64le, nevertheless it is a positive move from the company that is well known for its unfriendly stance against OSS

52

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Fedora 36 is out!

« on: May 11, 2022, 06:08:27 pm »

More details at https://fedoramagazine.org/whats-new-fedora-36-workstation/

Changes

* Kernel 5.17.x
* GNOME 42

It is an incremental upgrade from Fedora 35. The performance of Mutter is still horrible, I hope in GNOME 44 the team would optimise the animation further.

53

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] FreeBSD 13.1 brings lots of PPC changes

« on: March 12, 2022, 07:51:28 pm »

FreeBSD 13.1 is bringing a number of fixes and improvements, especially for those running FreeBSD on PowerPC hardware. Some of the changes as of FreeBSD 13.1 include:

- Support for the LLVM debugger (LLDB) on FreeBSD PowerPC architecture.

- Enabling optimized Assembly code for OpenSSL on PowerPC / PowerPC64 / PowerPC64LE.

- A wide variety of other PowerPC 64-bit fixes.

- Big endian support for more FreeBSD kernel device drivers.

URL: https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-stable/2022-March/000571.html

54

General Hardware Discussion / Could Intel DG2 the missing piece of the puzzle for ppc64le workstation?

« on: March 03, 2022, 09:53:44 pm »

Intel is working hard to get DG2 GPU driver ready for Linux 5.18. From what I know so far Intel has confirmed the driver would also work for 64k pagesize kernel.
If the Intel team can deliver a better Linux driver, I surely would replace my AMD GPU with an DG2.

55

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] AlmaLinux 8.5 now supports PowerPC

« on: February 25, 2022, 06:45:59 pm »

Yet another option if you want to move away from CentOS

URL: https://almalinux.org/blog/almalinux-for-powerpc-85-stable-now-available/

56

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Chimera Linux ISOs are now available

« on: February 24, 2022, 06:32:20 pm »

This Linux distro is based on FreeBSD userland and LLVM. It is one of interesting take by q66 and has picked up momentum since its inception.

URL: https://chimera-linux.org/downloads/

57

Applications and Porting / [GAME] Citra the Nintendo 3DS emulator

« on: February 23, 2022, 09:29:19 pm »

There are some issues with GCC12 compilation with teakra which is one of the component that citra depends on. I've managed to fix it upstream so once this PR https://github.com/citra-emu/citra/pull/5961 is merged, this emulator can be successfully compiled on Fedora 36

58

Applications and Porting / CDE 2.4.0c runs quite okay on Fedora 35

« on: February 11, 2022, 08:04:45 am »

Lots of libs to be installed. And a bit play around with headers symlink, the CDE 2.4.0c can be compiled successfully from git source

CDE is pretty useless to today standard. However I really dig the retro look

59

Mod Zone / Convert an IBM System X3200 M3 case to be ATX compliant

« on: February 10, 2022, 06:05:00 am »

The IBM System X3200 M3 workstation is 90% compatible with ATX motherboard.

I was fortunate to get one for $20 AUD. The modifications are:

* I/O plate trim down to fit the ATX I/O plate (it is not perfect, there is a small gap)
* USB front panel hub
* LEDs front panel
* PSU replacement

URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anJDGK0RPOI

60

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] FreeBSD 12.3 is out

« on: December 08, 2021, 07:59:57 pm »

URL: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.3R/announce/

Release Notes: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.3R/relnotes/


Pretty much security fixes, no major changes that are specific to powerpc64 variant