Messages

1

Applications and Porting / Re: Arcade Emulators RetroArch

« on: June 02, 2026, 04:21:17 am »

Hi, what currently works in RetroArch is FinalBurnArcade. With that, you can use Mame ROMs, which perform much better than our own Mame due to the usual lack of optimization on Power. I can't tell you what the Alpha version is, I don't know it. I tried installing the Naomi/Dreamcast FlyCast emulator; I mentioned it in another post a while ago with Classic. We managed to compile and install it, but it wouldn't run because of the part of the C++ code related to vector instructions, which are obviously only available for X86 and ARM. We had to tell the code to ignore that part, but unfortunately, I tried to run games like Capcom VS SNK 2, but unfortunately, it wouldn't run. We tried bypassing that part in every way, but it didn't work. The part in VSX/Altivec isn't there and would have to be written from scratch for Power. Yesterday I also started Super Model, a Sega Model 3 emulator, but unfortunately there are several problems there too. In that case, the story is paradoxical considering that the original card ran with PPC and therefore it should have been a walk in the park for Power, but unfortunately the usual parts written on X86 to optimize the code create a big problem for us because we necessarily have to go through those and obviously Power doesn't understand anything and we would need the JIT. Sega Rally 2 started, the audio is perfect but unfortunately there are obvious graphical glitches and it's not good in general.

2

Applications and Porting / Arcade Emulators RetroArch

« on: May 31, 2026, 05:39:43 am »

Good morning everyone, I've been wanting to improve the performance of old arcade games on Power for a while, but as was clear by now, there are some limitations with MAME due to the fact that there is no version optimized for Power, obviously, so as soon as you get to games like Street Fighter 3 from 1998/99, everything starts to slow down, unfortunately. Speaking with Gemini, I discovered that with Retroarch, it was possible to get much better performance because it doesn't work like MAME, which emulates every single cycle of the old CPUs and therefore puts a lot of work on the CPU. Having no optimization, it starts to crash, but it manages the emulation differently and more optimally. At that point, we took the sources and rebuilt Retroarch for Power, and to my great surprise, I installed SF3 and now the game runs great compared to MAME. So in the next few days I'll try other old arcade games that ran poorly on MAME to see how they perform on Retroarch, but I have to say I'm very satisfied with the result achieved.

It wasn't easy to find all the sources directly because GitHub seems to have put usernames and passwords on certain sources. After building the main RetroArch, we also had to rebuild the part that loads the actual arcade emulator because when we went to look for the cores, they said they were unavailable.

3

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 44 officially released!

« on: May 30, 2026, 10:13:40 am »

After much fumbling with Gemini, which is also trial and error, we finally found the right path. Every new kernel Fedora installs puts a string with $ in the boot file, and petitboot can't read that file, resulting in an initrd error. We removed that string, and apparently the kernel is working properly again. We figured this out because it had me compare the 7.0.10 boot files with those of the rescue build, which actually works. That's when Gemini told me that that string is confusing petitboot.

4

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 44 officially released!

« on: May 29, 2026, 03:30:42 pm »

After a long time, I decided to put Fedora back among my distros to use on Power. I reinstalled it from scratch and I actually noticed the great step forward that Fedora has made on Power, responsive, fluid, made really well now as a desktop. The 7.0.9 kernel was installed when I installed it, a few days ago I installed 7.0.10, in the grub update it tells me in yellow therefore a warning, that it had found the Debian and Ubuntu kernels, normal I say, I also have those currently mounted and it's not the first time I have all 3 of them. The fact is that as soon as I reboot the new Kernel 7.0.10, from petitboot it tells me an initramfs error... I say, but how come I just updated the kernel and it doesn't work anymore? What the hell is going on? I had just decided to put Fedora back and already the problems are starting, is it possible? Now I'm wondering, having given that warning when it found the kernels of the other two, did it mean that it's running out of memory, given the error, in petitboot or is there another problem that prevents me from booting Fedora with both 7.0.9 (which no longer works) and 7.0.10. It only works with the rescue mode at the moment. I tried having it ignore the other kernels, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the 7.0.10 kernel, I tried reinstalling some parts but nothing works. Any ideas?

5

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] LuaJIT PPC64 support

« on: May 11, 2026, 01:14:27 pm »

Power 12 will happen because Power's chief engineer, William Starke, spoke about it directly. He did an interview not long ago announcing Power 11 and that immediately after that, there will be a move to Power 12, which will also have a new production process. The point is that if it doesn't return to being completely open, unfortunately, we won't have a sequel to Power 9...

6

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] Upstreaming PPC64 optmisation patch for Google SKIA library

« on: May 11, 2026, 01:03:54 pm »

Unfortunately, Google doesn't offer any support for ppc64. I don't know if they're still afraid of us, but the fact remains that this is the situation. But as for the implementation, since Tim is following and developing Chormium ppc64, can't he do it himself in the version he regularly updates? Or maybe he already will...

7

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian 13 Trixie is out!

« on: May 10, 2026, 03:48:35 pm »

After a while, I finally figured out where the problems with the new Debian kernels were. I'm currently using the new 7.0.5, which I compiled and installed myself. The problem was that since I was still using X11 by default, whenever I tried to use a recent kernel, it wouldn't boot. I set Wayland by default, and it booted fine. I tried booting Trixie's current 6.12.86, but that didn't work either, and then I noticed it has 4K pages, which is probably why it's not working. In any case, I've now started using custom kernels on Debian again; I even compiled and installed a 7.0.3 on Ubuntu.

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Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [BUG] Linux 7.0-rc1

« on: March 29, 2026, 08:45:24 am »

Great, I'd like to try compiling and installing it on Debian as soon as the stable one is released, which hasn't worked since version 6.2 or later... I'd also like to see how RDNA 4 support is going because I'd like to upgrade to a Radeon Pro, but unfortunately, it seems like no one knows anything about it yet...

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GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: The new 9070 XT seems like a really interesting card for Blackbird owners.

« on: March 28, 2026, 04:50:29 pm »

Any news on where we're at to use RDNA4 on Power? I think it'll take the usual trifecta: appropriate firmware, updated drivers, and, of course, a recent kernel...

10

General OpenPOWER Discussion / Re: Queensland Health, IBM's 12 year ban and the future of POWER

« on: March 15, 2026, 09:01:20 am »

Daniel, I'm not sure what this article means exactly. If we're talking about Power, IBM has continued to support it for years and continues to invest a lot of money, which obviously means it's profitable. Power 11 was launched in the summer of last year, from what I understand, but it's still unclear whether it's completely open source or still has binary firmware. We know that ultimately it only depends on the Raptor firmware, whether or not they can design a new system... But as for its overall presence, I think there's no doubt about it.

11

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Linux 6.18

« on: February 06, 2026, 06:39:38 am »

I just compiled version 6.18.2 for Ubuntu a few days ago, and it works fine on Power. On Debian, however, it still doesn't work. Ubuntu must have made some updates to fix the problem. I remember it didn't work on Ubuntu either until recently. I need to figure out if it's a firmware issue, a Mesa driver issue, or something else. I'm looking into it with Gemini.

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Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Linux 6.16

« on: January 13, 2026, 04:23:29 pm »

Sorry guys, I've noticed that since some kernel releases, there are compilation issues when building a custom kernel. Every time I try to do so, it stops at a certain point and gives me this error:
Makefile:2025: .] error 2
debian/rules:7: build-arch error2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2
makefile:1671: bindeb-pkg error 2
I've reported the most important things it says, but in any case, it still won't compile. I've tried both Debian and Ubuntu, which is a Debian derivative. I've even tried a server version of Debian 12, but nothing. There must be some file that needs to be modified with these new kernels that have changed something. Any idea what's going on?

13

Talos II / Re: Ubuntu 20.04 5.4.0-167: kexec load failed

« on: November 17, 2025, 07:26:55 am »

I currently also use Ubuntu sometimes as an alternative to Debian, I use both, I must say that 24.04 works well and even runs with its Kernel 6.8.0.X, but I use a Radeon 5700 XT as a graphics card which apparently doesn't work with the new Kernels on Debian 12 and 13 which I still can't use today and I have to use the long-life version 6.1.X...

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Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Debian 13 Trixie is out!

« on: October 20, 2025, 05:45:34 am »

The strange thing is that on Ubuntu, for example, kernels older than 6.2 work, using version 6.8 and doing just fine, so I don't understand why Debian continues to have problems after kernel version 6.2. If I try to compile and install the latest kernel on Debian 11, everything works fine, but if I try Debian 12 or later, it no longer works when switching from AST to Radeon 5700 XT. I'd like to know if people like Daniel Pocock, for example, are aware of this problem and could offer me a solution...

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GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Ability to use Nvidia RTX 50XX on Power

« on: October 19, 2025, 04:35:52 pm »

Yes, you're right. After looking at other articles, I realized that they are part of the Volta 100 support that Nvidia gave to Power machines, which then ended in 2024. In any case, I read that from Kernel 6.16 onwards, there should be drivers already available for the latest RTX 50XX cards, but I'll have to see if we can also use them on Power...