Messages

1

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: August 11, 2026, 10:14:29 pm »

https://github.com/runlevel5/firefox-ppc64/releases/tag/FIREFOX_153_0_4_RELEASE_PPC64 has also added support for PowerPC970 (G4/G5). I have tested it on Debian Linux running on my POWER9 box and had 2 folks in the ArchPOWER side to help with the verification with their G5 however I am not 100% certain that it would perfectly on native hardware (PowerMac G4)

2

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: August 03, 2026, 11:48:28 pm »

Thanks tle. FF BE it is huge milestone.

So next milestone will be GLES-3.0 BE  mesa driver support, otherwise firefox webrender hard accel do not work. Atm only gles2.0 extensions is supported on BE.

That's way out of scope. Even if I want to do it, I have zero clue about mesa codebases. My initial goal was to get SpiderMonkey up and running on BE. Fortunately the full Firefox can be built and ran successfully (despite of lacking optimisations in many components). I guess that is enough as foundation for the community to improve upon.

3

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: August 03, 2026, 07:07:45 pm »

So tle firefox port already support big endian?
This Firefox-v153 patches work on ESR140.12?

thanks of adavance.

Yes BE is now fully supported.

The ESR 153 patches will NOT work on ESR 140.

4

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: July 24, 2026, 08:16:56 am »

@tle

I'll try to add your patches from yesterday for version 153 to my Void Linux templates as soon as possible and run some comparison tests with version 152.

I'd like to point out that Firefox is actually slower than Chromium (on x86_64 and aarch64) for the same KrakenJS tests.

5

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Follow-up: Void Linux on ppc64le - Firefox Native Build vs Fedora 42

« on: July 22, 2026, 02:58:21 am »

Your finding is spot on. Clang+LTO produces the smallest size binary and the performance is better.

6

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: July 22, 2026, 02:23:51 am »

Chiming in to say I've been testing a Fedora build of v152 that has not hiccuped once and finally feels like a full-featured browser. It's slower than Chromium on the same hardware - the Kraken JS test indicated around 1200ms on Chromium, and a skosh over 2100ms on Firefox - but for everyday usage I'm quite happy. Thanks for this!

The Firefox 153 JIT SpiderMonkey is actually 18% faster than Chromium + V8. The slowness derives from the browser side, likely DOM rendering which is out of scope of this work btw.

7

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Follow-up: Void Linux on ppc64le - Firefox Native Build vs Fedora 42

« on: July 20, 2026, 07:59:02 pm »

Good finding. Let me try to dig in a bit and see if I could re-produce similar results on Fedora 44

8

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: July 20, 2026, 07:55:51 pm »

tle, are you already using Fable, or which model do you use?

I do use a little bit of Fable before it was taken down by the US government. These days I use a bit of Opus for mundane tasks like rebasing or monitoring full test suites run.

9

Operating Systems and Porting / [HELP] Install grub boot loader for Chimera installation [SOLVED]

« on: June 23, 2026, 07:26:00 pm »

Good morning everyone

I would like to ask if anyone has managed to install grub boot-loader successfully for their Chimera installation. This is how I did it but upon restarting the boot-loader failed to load correct firmware:

Code: [Select]

# NOTES: This installation is done in libvirt VM (so no petitboot obviously)

# Download the ISO then boot it up under VM

$ cfdisk /dev/vda
choose `gpt`

select Free space -> choose [New] -> 16MB
select /dev/vda1 -> [Type] -> PowerPC PReP boot

select Free space -> [New] -> 1GB
select /dev/vda2 -> [Type] -> Linux filesystem

select Free space -> [New] -> 4GB
select /dev/vda3 -> [Type] -> Linux swap

select Free space -> [New] -> 45GB
select /dev/vda4 -> [Type] -> Linux filesystem

choose [Write] --> yes

choose [quit]

$ mkfs.ext4 /dev/vda2
$ mkswap /dev/vda3
$ mkfs.ext4 /dev/vda4
$ mount /dev/vda4 /mnt
$ mount -m /dev/vda2 /mnt/boot/
$ swapon /dev/vda3
$ chimera-bootstrap /mnt
$ chimra-chroot /mnt
$ apk add grub-powerpc-ieee1275
$ mkdir -p /boot/grub/
$ grub-install --target=powerpc-ieee1275 /dev/vda1
$ update-grub

$ exit
$ umount -R /mnt
$ reboot


Great thanks in advance

EDIT: I managed to fix the issue myself, I forgot to install linux kernel, that is `apk add linux-stable` step.  I documented the full installation at https://gist.github.com/runlevel5/ca4d531c8e90c133fc31c47f823c073d

10

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: June 17, 2026, 08:12:59 pm »

I can not boot tle-hero ppc-firefox build on trisquel ecne. 
Can you bump it firefox newer and recompile on glibc 2.39 <=

please, please  tle

~/Downloads/firefox$ ./firefox
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /Downloads/firefox/libxul.so:
/lib/powerpc64le-linux-gnu/libm.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.43' not found (required by /Downloads/firefox/libxul.so)
Couldn't load XPCOM.

~/Downloads/firefox$ ldd --version
ldd (trisquel GLIBC 2.39-0trisquel8.7trisquel1) 2.39
Copyright (C) 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Esto es software libre; vea el código fuente para las condiciones de copia.
No hay NINGUNA garantía; ni siquiera de COMERCIABILIDAD o IDONEIDAD PARA UN
FIN DETERMINADO.
Escrito por Roland McGrath y Ulrich Drepper.

I mean you have to compile it on Trisquel because that distribution does not have the same glibc version. The build instructions is kinda like this:

git clone --tags https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox.git
cd firefox
git checkout FIREFOX_152_0_1_RELEASE

# download 3 patches from https://github.com/runlevel5/firefox/releases/tag/FIREFOX_152_0_1_RELEASE_PPC64

git am 000*.patch
mkdir -p obj-ff-ppc64
export CC=gcc
export CXX=g++
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-release
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --enable-jit
ac_add_options --with-ccache
ac_add_options --with-libclang-path=/usr/lib64
ac_add_options --without-wasm-sandboxed-libraries
ac_add_options --enable-linker=lld
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/obj-ff-ppc64
./mach build
./mach package


Then let me know how you go, I highly encourage you ask the Trisque packagers to adopt my downstream patches so you do not have to build it yourself

11

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAME] Minecraft Java Edition (LWJGL being ported)

« on: June 17, 2026, 08:06:26 pm »

26.2 is also out

Check https://github.com/runlevel5/minecraft-ppc64le/releases/tag/26.2

12

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Linux 7.1

« on: June 14, 2026, 06:15:40 pm »

7.1 is out! https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wi4BF4bMhZNZ1tqs+FFV4OuZRe3ZqdWB+LxRLmRweUzQw@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

No changes related to ppc64 however the new NTFS driver is a welcoming change for users who still interact with Windows filesystem.

13

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAME] Minecraft Java Edition (LWJGL being ported)

« on: June 14, 2026, 10:57:20 am »

26.1.2 can now be played.

There is only issue I picked up https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl3/issues/1126, while waiting for the fix merged upstreamed,
you could use my patched jar which could be found at https://github.com/runlevel5/lwjgl3/releases/tag/3.4.1-ppc64-fix

And for you convenience, the manifest file for PrismLauncher could be downloaded from https://github.com/runlevel5/minecraft-ppc64le/releases/tag/26.2

Have fun folks!

14

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] dosbox-staging -- one of the best choice for DOS gaming

« on: June 01, 2026, 02:26:57 am »

dosbox-staging has officially removed PPC64LE JIT backend in 0.83.0 because they are unable to maintain the work without access to hardware.

So I've decided to fork the project to re-introduce this feature, see https://github.com/runlevel5/dosbox-staging-power/pull/2, the goal is to be able to produce a patch file for downstream packagers to re-introduce PPC64LE JIT.

15

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] JIT support for Firefox

« on: May 30, 2026, 09:20:29 am »

Chiming in to say I've been testing a Fedora build of v152 that has not hiccuped once and finally feels like a full-featured browser. It's slower than Chromium on the same hardware - the Kraken JS test indicated around 1200ms on Chromium, and a skosh over 2100ms on Firefox - but for everyday usage I'm quite happy. Thanks for this!

The port has more rooms for improvements but for now I refrain from introducing further changes in order to get it to a stable / well tested state for upstreaming