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MintPPC project

@z970mp No worries, as I have appreciated your various attempts to help me install Abiword and then giving tips on how to remove broken installs etc.

I am assuming that running # dpkg --audit and getting # as the output, and Synaptic Package Manager reporting 0 broken, 0 to install/upgrade, 0 to remove shows that my system is OK?

@Jeroen Diederen No worries, as I have appreciated your attempts with Spotify and Abiword on my behalf.

I have looked at LyX, but as it is a LaTeX-based document processor primarily designed to process and layout large/long documents e.g. theses, books, technical reports etc. containing a lot of mathematics and technical text, it is not something I would really need to use the Pismo G3 for.

FocusWriter is a simpler alternative that is probably more suited to writing simpler, mainly non-technical documents on the Pismo G3 than LyX.
 
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verdantppc said:
I am assuming that running # dpkg --audit and getting # as the output, and Synaptic Package Manager reporting 0 broken, 0 to install/upgrade, 0 to remove shows that my system is OK?
Click to expand...

Certainly, your system is OK. sudo apt autoremove will confirm this if it gives the same response. Unless you upgrade glibc, or some other integral system component, the most that usually comes from messing with different packages and repositories is that APT can get "confused" with different package dependencies. Usually, removing the problematic installed package and then telling it exactly where to look for packages (repositories) is enough for it to calm down, good as new.

Going off your replies, that is essentially what you did, though there are multiple ways to accomplish this.
 
z970mp said:
Certainly, your system is OK. sudo apt autoremove will confirm this if it gives the same response. Unless you upgrade glibc, or some other integral system component, the most that usually comes from messing with different packages and repositories is that APT can get "confused" with different package dependencies. Usually, removing the problematic installed package and then telling it exactly where to look for packages (repositories) is enough for it to calm down, good as new.

Going off your replies, that is essentially what you did, though there are multiple ways to accomplish this.
Click to expand...

apt autoremove outputs 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 68 not upgraded. So all is good, thank you.
 
Jeroen Diederen said:
That looks good indeed. Thank you for posting in my forum.
Click to expand...

Glad to.

BTW do you have a proposed strategy for how MintPPC systems can be regularly (and perhaps automatically in the background?) upgraded from your MintPPC repo with Debian security updates from the sid backports repo without necessarily also upgrading installed packages which could break them?
 
Almost all packages are in Debian unstable. For the moment just do it manually with
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Please give me the output of
cat /etc/apt/sources.list
[automerge]1578061101[/automerge]
I am not sure how many people actually use MintPPC. If there is enough interest, I might have a look if I can port an old version of mintupdate, just like in MintPPC 11.
 
Jeroen Diederen said:
Almost all packages are in Debian unstable. For the moment just do it manually with
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Please give me the output of
cat /etc/apt/sources.list
[automerge]1578061101[/automerge]
I am not sure how many people actually use MintPPC. If there is enough interest, I might have a look if I can port an old version of mintupdate, just like in MintPPC 11.
Click to expand...

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
#

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 10.0 _Sid_ - Unofficial powerpc NETINST 20190716-06:04]/ sid main

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 10.0 _Sid_ - Unofficial powerpc NETINST 20190716-06:04]/ sid main

deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports sid main
deb-src http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports sid main

## MintPPC repository
deb http://u58733p55594.web0093.zxcs-klant.nl/repo unstable main

# This system was installed using small removable media
# (e.g. netinst, live or single CD). The matching "deb cdrom"
# entries were disabled at the end of the installation process.
# For information about how to configure apt package sources,
# see the sources.list(5) manual.

#
 
@verdantppc Your sources.list looks good. I would comment out the dev-src line as there are none in Debian-ports.

Mintupdate: I fiddled around with the mintupdate debs that are still available on the Linux Mint repository, but they do not work as they rely on the Linux mint repos. The one I used in MintPPC 11 was based on Linux Mint LXDE katya I think it was. I do not find the code anymore for this one.

I would go for the Debian way then:

UnattendedUpgrades - Debian Wiki

wiki.debian.org wiki.debian.org

BTW I found the Linux Mint 11 LXDE iso. I will have a look if I can find anything useful there.
edit: no files on the iso, only squash filesystem. @wicknix do you know how to mount such a squash filesystem ?
 
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Jeroen Diederen said:
@verdantppc Your sources.list looks good. I would comment out the dev-src line as there are none in Debian-ports.

Mintupdate: I fiddled around with the mintupdate debs that are still available on the Linux Mint repository, but they do not work as they rely on the Linux mint repos. The one I used in MintPPC 11 was based on Linux Mint LXDE katya I think it was. I do not find the code anymore for this one.

I would go for the Debian way then:

UnattendedUpgrades - Debian Wiki

wiki.debian.org wiki.debian.org

BTW I found the Linux Mint 11 LXDE iso. I will have a look if I can find anything useful there.
edit: no files on the iso, only squash filesystem. @wicknix do you know how to mount such a squash filesystem ?
Click to expand...

Thanks, I have commented out the deb-src line.

Just me thinking aloud - if you still had the membership email list from your MintPPC 11 forum and Linux on Mac, you could let the former members know about the MintPPC 2019 version being live (if not already done so), and also perhaps any who may have tried to continue with MintPPC 11 after you finished with it, may still have the files for Mint LXDE Katya etc.?
 
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Just fired up my G4 MDD with all versions of MintPPC running and development versions. I had version 8, 9 and 11. I found Mintupdate 4.3.3 which was used in MintPPC 11.
 
That is very fortunate and good news hopefully for all MintPPC users. Thanks again for all your efforts on this, as on a Pismo G3 / G4, Arctic Fox running in Linux LXDE is faster and so more practically useable than TenFourFox running in OS X Tiger. :)
 
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A pity.....:(

Some good news though - I appear to have sorted the PulseAudio Volume Control on startup 'freezes' on "Establishing connection to PulseAudio. Please wait..." issue with the Pismo G3 MintPPC installation.

It appears that the installer only installs the pavucontrol package (hence the PulseAudio Volume Control app icon being present) but not the essential pulseaudio package!

To fix the problem:

1. Go to root via

su --login

2. Then bring the system up to date

apt update
apt upgrade
apt autoremove

3. Then fix pulseaudio

apt remove --purge pavucontrol
apt install pulseaudio pavucontrol

4. Exit root and at user prompt

pulseaudio --start

and then PulseAudio Volume Control should be working and not freeze at "Establishing connection to PulseAudio. Please wait..."

EDIT:

1. Fixing pulseaudio also restores the functioning of the volume down (F3 key), volume up (F4 key), and volume mute (F6 key), although the stepping is not continuous (unlike with OS9 and OSX) and there is a response time-lag, so avoid pressing the F3 or F4 key rapidly or holding them down, otherwise you will get stuttering audio as the playback volume and the volume change go out of sync.

To see if I can minimise this, I have edited /etc/pulse/daemon.pa and added to the file, the following lines since pulseaudio is a network-capable multichannel software sound server 'sitting' above alsa:

# realtime-scheduling = yes
realtime-scheduling = no

and will be testing to see what effects, if any, these two settings each have on audio.

2. Another relevant issue to note when changing the volume control panel settings (accessed via right-clicking on the volume icon in the panel) appears to be that only a USB mouse button right-click functions within the LXDE panel, not right-clicking via CTRL + Click or via a three finger tap on the track/touch pad.
 
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@Jeroen Diederen You ported it between versions in MintPPC, didn't you? You had to make Mintupdate from MintPPC 8 work with MintPPC 9, and so on.

Find out why it doesn't work in Debian Sid, and deal with that component so it does. System logs may be helpful here.

Alternatively, see if you can get the source for Linux Mint DE's Mintupdate and try building that on PowerPC.
 
I am not a programmer, only very basic knowledge. I know how to port code to ppc that is all. If people really want it I need help from more experienced people.
Linux Mint DE uses the same Linux Mint repos, not usable in MintPPC.
 
Ok, followed the Debian wiki for UnattendedUpgrades and it works flawlessly:
Code: 
sudo apt install unattended-upgrades
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades
did a manual test run:
Code: 
sudo unattended-upgrade -d
It installed one new package:
Code: 
cat /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades-dpkg.log 
Log started: 2020-01-03  22:40:28
(Reading database ... 305846 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libperl4-corelibs-perl_0.004-2_all.deb ...
Unpacking libperl4-corelibs-perl (0.004-2) over (0.004-1) ...
Setting up libperl4-corelibs-perl (0.004-2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.0-2) ...
Log ended: 2020-01-03  22:40:56
 
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Jeroen Diederen said:
@verdantppc Could you please post your findings with respect to pulseaudio on your Pismo on my forum? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Have done.

BTW regarding GRUB 2 booting of Linux on powerpc, I note the following from Adelie Linux:

Install the boot loader

You will now install the boot loader to your system. Depending on your computer's firmware and architecture, you may have different choices for boot loaders. Consult the appropriate architecture-specific documentation for your computer, and your firmware vendor, for more information.

  • For x86 (including x86_64) and PowerPC, we only support GRUB 2.
  • Some newer PowerPC computers using skiboot may not require a bootloader.
  • ARM computers typically require a model-specific bootloader, such as U-Boot. Installation instructions for U-Boot are beyond the scope of this guide.
Click to expand...

see https://wiki.adelielinux.org/wiki/Package:GRUB2 and https://www.adelielinux.org/about.html

Edit 1: The Adelie Linux 1.0-BETA4 Live (PowerPC 32-bit) installer CD boots via GRUB 2 into the installer by simple holding down 'c' when booting my clamshell iBook G3.....

Edit 2: Regarding grub-ieee1275 for powerpc, see Running GRUB2 on PowerPC Macs...
 
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@Jeroen Diederen

I have done this and nothing was picked up - my current version is 27.9.18-fienix?

BTW I have tried to install LibreOffice on my Pismo G3 and it was unsuccessful with 20 apparently unresolvable broken packages.
 
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