Messages

16

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 34 is out!

« on: May 06, 2021, 12:50:11 pm »

After using F34 for one week I can say its stable on Powerpc, as the previous versions I'd used (F32/33) before on the Blackbird.

I cannot say the same about x86. In one week it froze twice on a Dell Latitude notebook (known to be "Linux friendly"). The background becomes black&white and I have to force shut down pushing the power on/off button.

I have the same environment on both Power and x86: F34, KDE and the same applications.

It seems like F34 was behind the schedule and was officially launched while still in test. I hope it'll be fixed soon with kernel updates.

17

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 34 is out!

« on: April 30, 2021, 09:14:20 am »

guys i'm seeing some videos on youtube, related to Fedora 34 and i'm seeing that the x86 version doesn't have the fluidity problems that we encounter instead ... Unfortunately this time they did a bad job on Power and the results are these. I hope that it will be reported as soon as possible and that they do some updates to fix it because it really sucks when you enter the applications ...

Hey Maury, there is something wrong with F34 video drivers, even on x86. I've updated my Dell notebook from F33 to F34 and since then I cannot change the resolution (fixed at 1920x1080) and the second monitor is somehow related to the notebook display, I mean the zoom (%) applied to the note monitor affects the zoom in the external monitor (also Dell) and I had to play a bit until I could restore the previous setting. Now, with the Blackbird, when I open the display settings I see just 4 options for resolution, among them just one 16x9 (1920x1080).

PS: on the Blackbird I'm using the BMC HDMI output.

18

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 34 is out!

« on: April 28, 2021, 10:12:27 am »

More info at https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-34/

I have upgrade my Blackbird (with AMD R9 Nano GPU) from F33 to F34 successfully.

Everything works as expected though the animation of gnome-shell is sluggish.

Updated. In the beginnig everything looked different and a few issues till I found out that I was logging in using Cinnamon and not KDE, as I used to before upgrading. Now everything looks fine.

19

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: Ubuntu anomalies on Power

« on: April 26, 2021, 01:37:52 pm »

Hello to the whole Oper Power community, for some time I have installed Ubuntu in one of my hard disks and immediately afterwards to use my RX 5700 XT Navi 10 card, I compiled a kernel specifically. Using Ubuntu and checking the various features with respect to Fedora and Debian, I realized that unfortunately this distribution has various criticalities. I had also noticed it when I just bought the Blackbird, I tried Ubuntu first and unfortunately I saw that these critical issues are still present and they are bothersome as well. Specifically, I refer to the Firefox bookmarks for example, only on Ubuntu this browser gives this perennial error, since I installed version 19.04 and now that we have reached 20.10, the problem persists. It says there is probably a problem with the security software that an Ubuntu does and therefore there is a conflict but how come they still haven't solved it after years? I also tried to do what the guide says, eliminating directories that he himself indicates but the problem persists. Another very strange thing is the connection to the network. The system is regularly connected to the network but the icon at the top right indicating the connection is partially cut off, for him it is as if there is no network, press the connect button but nothing happens, yet the system is regularly connected to the internet. Problem that has also existed for years and has never been solved by the Ubuntu team. Another anomaly resides in the numeric keypad, the numbers are inverted, instead of starting with the number 1 from the bottom left, it starts with the same from the top always to the left and therefore instead of the number 7. 7,8,9 become 1, 2,3 ... Another anomaly occurs when using the Gnome software center, Ubuntu does not have it by default like Debian or Fedora and so I downloaded it, when you try to install an application after selecting it, he puts waiting without ever starting to download ... Honestly it is a shame that it has all these critical issues because as an optimization it is perhaps the best on Power, it is more fluid even than Fedora at the moment ... a real shame, if anyone knows how to solve these critical issues would be a really good thing ...

Hey Maury, I use my Blackbird as a desktop.  I mean, browser (chromium and firefox), email client (thunderbird) and open office. I use it with Fedora and KDE Plasma. What difference would it make for a user like myself if the OS is Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora?

20

Applications and Porting / Re: Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium DNF Repository

« on: April 21, 2021, 09:20:46 am »

v87 RPM is out https://gitlab.com/chromium-ppc64le/chromium-ppc64le/-/releases/v87.0.4280.67-1

Thanks tle!

21

Applications and Porting / Re: Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium DNF Repository

« on: April 16, 2021, 05:17:33 am »

v86 is out https://gitlab.com/chromium-ppc64le/chromium-ppc64le/-/releases/v86.0.4240.198-1

Thank you tle! This post is being posted on Chromium v86!

22

Applications and Porting / Re: Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium DNF Repository

« on: April 15, 2021, 04:19:08 am »

Okay, folks, the RPM for v85 is now available at https://gitlab.com/chromium-ppc64le/chromium-ppc64le

Great! I've already updated. DNF asked to confirm non-official source.. but I trust and praise you tle for your efforts!

For corporate or security environment, I highly recommend you to clone the repo then `make dev` then `make chromium` or `make ungoogled-chromium` on your local box.

That's for sure. The only question that remains is who is going to check the source code?

Anyway, CORPORATE, IMHO, means MS, VMWare, RHEL, Oracle, SAP, IBM and many others proprietary softwares that companies and governments trust blindly. Another step further, maybe based on the same arguments ("we trust our IT providers"), most corporations are ok with Intel/AMD and any other blob inside their servers. They even trust cloud providers with their virtualized servers, which they have no guarantee whatsoever of what's "inside".

23

Applications and Porting / Re: Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium DNF Repository

« on: April 14, 2021, 09:23:04 am »

Okay, folks, the RPM for v85 is now available at https://gitlab.com/chromium-ppc64le/chromium-ppc64le

Great! I've already updated. DNF asked to confirm non-official source.. but I trust and praise you tle for your efforts!

24

Blackbird / Re: Price of Blackbird went up $1,144 from April 2020

« on: April 13, 2021, 12:03:25 am »

I simulated a purchase and found out they removed the possibility to buy the Blackbird with 8 cores. Of course you can still buy the CPU yourself and replace but that you'd have wasted the 4 cores that comes with the unit and the work and responsibility of replacing the CPU.

It seems Raptor wants to position the Blackbird even more "entry level", although the price went up $1,144.

25

Blackbird / Re: Price of Blackbird went up $1,144 from April 2020

« on: April 12, 2021, 12:02:21 pm »

Order fees. Included since end of 2019, IIRC.

I've checked the invoice and they have not charged an "order fee". Maybe it was part of the shipping fee.

By the way, how much was this "order fee" that has been included in the price?

26

Blackbird / Raptor Support does not reply

« on: April 12, 2021, 10:56:41 am »

Hi folks,

Anyone knows what's going on with Raptor's support? I opened a support ticket a month ago (March the 13th) and still got no answer. I've been trying to talk to someone over the phone (+1215126900240) and all I get is an answering machine.

Anyone know if Is there another number we can talk to Raptor's support?

Thanks

27

Blackbird / Re: Price of Blackbird went up $1,144 from April 2020

« on: April 12, 2021, 10:45:43 am »

This has to do with a number of things. But it should be noted that the fees that were listed separately in the past are now included in the price.

Which fees? I paid $2,850 April 2020 for the Blackbird (mounted desktop). There were no fees on top of this price.

28

Blackbird / Re: Price of Blackbird went up $1,144 from April 2020

« on: April 12, 2021, 06:25:15 am »

The price for a Blackbird is $1,558.19 today, ~$400 more compared to ~1 year ago.

Edit: Oh you're referring to the desktop (BK1SD1). My guess is that building such a system has become more costly because a) it needs more time than just putting a mainboard in a box and ship it and b) Tim's calendar is full, so time has become more valuable.

I meant the assembled desktop which sells for $3,994 on Raptor's web site (see attached).

29

Blackbird / Price of Blackbird went up $1,144 from April 2020

« on: April 11, 2021, 01:20:21 pm »

Hey guys, I've just seen the price for the (backordered) brand new Blackbird and found out that it went up $1,144 since I bought it back in April 2020.

I'm wandering if this is the same unit I bought or maybe there are some changes. As far as I could check, its the same power9 CPU, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD. Am I missing something?

30

Applications and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 34 Beta is out

« on: April 03, 2021, 12:42:44 pm »

If you want to change the default boot order, you could use grubby.

Like:

Code: [Select]

grubby --set-default /boot/vmlinuz-5.x.x.fc33.ppc64le

Thank you MPC7500.