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Open-source software currently supported on macOS PowerPC

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barracuda156

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Sep 3, 2021
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This is primarily meant for end-users (not for development, since the latter has a lot of stuff which is supported, hard to make a list). That is, for every-day tasks and regular usage.

Disclaimer: due to updates to the ports and their dependencies, it may happen that something fails to build at a given moment. It is advised to report such breakages on Trac for officially supported systems (Tiger and Leopard) and here or on my GitHub for 10.6 PPC.
(10.6.8 Rosetta is kinda supported by Macports in principle, but perhaps is of little interest for end-users.)
Notice also, that pretty much everything is built and tested on 10.5 and/or 10.6, but not on 10.4. It is expected that some stuff will be broken on Tiger; I can only recommend to use either Leopard (10.5.8) or Snow Leopard (10a190).
If you use Snow Leopard on PowerPC, that requires a few tweaks and some minimal maintenance effort (does not require any expertise, can be done by anyone). Since that is not supported by Macports upstream, ask me about that.

Audio
CsoundQt (Qt GUI for csound)
lastfm-desktop (LastFM scrobbler)
lmms (music production)
musikcube (music player)
qmmp (Qt-based player)
qsynth-qt4 (fluidsynth GUI)

Devel
GitX (GTK-based GUI client for git)
qgit (Qt-based GUI client for git)

Editors
gedit (Gnome editors)
kakoune (terminal editor)
lite-xl (text editor)
rb-diakonos (Ruby-based console text-editor)
step-writer (TUI text editor)
turbo (text editor)

Graphics
cyan (image viewer and converter, designed for prepress)
feh (X11 image viewer)
geeqie (GTK image viewer and organizer)
photoqt-qt4 (image viewer)
rawstudio (raw photo converter)

IRC / Discord
abaddon (Discord client)
hexchat
irssi
LimeChat

Mail
claws-mail (GTK GUI e-mail client)
mutt (CLI e-mail client)
nmail (e-mail client)
rb-sup (CLI e-mail client in Ruby)
sylpheed (GTK GUI e-mail client)

Multimedia / Video
avidemux (video editor)
QMPlay2 (video player)
qwinff (video converter)
VLC2 (media player)

Net
amule (eMule p2p network client)
cgmnlm (Gemini terminal client)
ctorrent (CLI torrent client)
deluge (GUI torrent client)
Deriv (Wired protocol client)
dino (Jabber client)
eiskaltdcpp (p2p file sharing)
offpunk (Gemini/Gopher CLI client)
pidgin (multi-protocol messenger)
profanity (XMPP client, confirmed working)
toxic (Tox messenger)
transmission-qt (Qt GUI for transmission, legacy version, but works fine)
transmission-x11 (X11 GUI works)
wireshark2 (legacy version, but appears functional)

News
pan2 (GTK-GUI news reader)

Office
abiword-x11 (Word processor)
gnumeric (GTK-based spreadsheet app)

Print
scribus (desktop publishing app)

Science / Math
elmerfem (partial differential equations solver)
R-app

Security
i2pd (I2P implementation)
Vidalia (GUI for tor)

Sysutils
albafetch (a faster replacement of Neofetch)
clifm (CLI file manager)
fastfetch (comprehensive alternative to Neofetch)
glances (system process monitor)
gonepass (1Password vault reader)
HexEditPowerPC (hex editor)
htop (process viewer)
McBopomofo (Chinese input)
MenuMeters (system monitor)
qterminal (terminal emulator)
QtPass (GUI for password manager)

Tex
EqualX
TeXShop

WWW
arora (web browser)
nicotine-plus (GUI client for Soulseek p2p network)
Obsession (Hotline client)
rb-t (CLI client for X/Twitter in Ruby)
smtube (YouTube browser)
tenfourfox-devel (web browser)
yewtube (YouTube browser)
youtube-viewer (YouTube browser)
 
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ervus said:
I tried to compile Handbrake, but I didn't get it working. This was the thread with some notes on that:

forums.macrumors.com

Handbrake and VLC on PowerPC

It should not be needed for HandBrake.
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
Click to expand...

It should be possible to resurrect the version of Handbrake which supported powerpc via GitHub commit history and possibly update some components for it then.
It is likely to require quite a bit of effort and perhaps moving some external dependencies into static ones for exclusive usage by Handbrake (or otherwise patch a lot for compatibility with modern versions).

P. S. Not really sure whether it is worth that effort, to be honest. AFAIR, I never needed to use it back then in 2000-s, and never used it ever since either.
 
Here we go:

transmission_gtk.png
 
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I kinda got the latest SDL2 working on PowerPC now, but as of now it is proof-of-concept state. It does output video, for example, or image, but it is horribly slow and freezes the OS if you try switching windows or something alike.

UPD. SDL video out in VLC in fact works normally. There are some complaints in terminal output (should be fixable), but there are no visible issues with video.
 
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TheShortTimer said:
@barracuda156 Have you built current versions of VLC and Transmission for PPC Macs? 😮
Click to expand...

Transmission yes, the latest (4.0.5).

VLC much newer than ever existed for PowerPC (2.2.8 vs 2.0.10), but not the current (3.x).
The problem is that it dropped Qt4 support, and Qt5 is broken.
It may be possible to build the current without GUI and forward the output to X server.

SDL2 is the almost the latest: 2.30.1, but upstream is developing 3.x now.
 
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barracuda156 said:
Transmission yes, the latest (4.0.5).

VLC much newer than ever existed for PowerPC (2.2.8 vs 2.0.10), but not the current (3.x).
The problem is that it dropped Qt4 support, and Qt5 is broken.
It may be possible to build the current without GUI and forward the output to X server.

SDL2 is the almost the latest: 2.30.1, but upstream is developing 3.x now.
Click to expand...

Bravo on all counts! :D

Thanks for doing this.
 
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P. S. Notice, however, that even 2.2.8 here is not the same as the old distributive: what I have links to the current versions of libraries used for playback.
 
TheShortTimer said:
Bravo on all counts! :D

Thanks for doing this.
Click to expand...

Now I need to convince Macports merge that somehow LOL
May be tricky for SDL2.

However, Transmission is already in Macports, and should build on Leopard normally. On 10.6 it gonna require some manual setup, I will make an instruction once sort out some stuff locally.
Use transmission-x11 port.
 
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barracuda156 said:
Now I need to convince Macports merge that somehow LOL
May be tricky for SDL2.
Click to expand...

SDL2 would create among other things, the possibility of an updated version of SDLMAME for PPC Macs. :D

barracuda156 said:
However, Transmission is already in Macports, and should build on Leopard normally. On 10.6 it gonna require some manual setup, I will make an instruction once sort out some stuff locally.
Use transmission-x11 port.
Click to expand...

Will these work with G3's and Tiger or are you concentrating on G4s/G5s and Leopard/PPC Snow Leopard?
 
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TheShortTimer said:
SDL2 would create among other things, the possibility of an updated version of SDLMAME for PPC Macs. :D

Will these work with G3's and Tiger or are you concentrating on G4s/G5s and Leopard/PPC Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...

1. Emulators and games will not work right now, largely, since they seem to need joystick support, which is badly broken, so I disabled it (it is not a required component of SDL2 as such).
Since I do not have a use-case for it, I probably won’t waste an unknown amount of time trying to fix it. (I wanted it to work for video and audio apps.)
I may be possible to drop in an earlier version of related sources though, from early 2.0.x, which are not yet broken beyond repair. I can try that once everything else is in ready-to-merge shape.

2. No idea, to be honest, but since Ken fixed Transmission 4.0.5 for gcc7 now, presumably it may work. Someone has to try it. For VLC there should also be nothing preventing it from working on 10.4, in principle, but I have no interest in testing it there (I mean, it is always a trade-off where to allocate time, and I rather fix something more for 10.5/10.6).
But if anyone will test and report errors, that could likely be addressed.
I doubt there are chances with SDL2 on Tiger, especially if games are a concern.
 
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TheShortTimer said:
@barracuda156 Have you built current versions of VLC and Transmission for PPC Macs? 😮
Click to expand...

If you could try VLC2, would be nice.

Mileage may vary :)
I find QMPlay2 vastly superior for video playback at the moment. However, looks like VLC working now.
FHD videos may not play (they do not for me, while they play fine in QMPlay2).

P. S. VLC is set to use X11 on old systems. I recommend wiping out system X11 and installing Macports xorg-server-legacy. Make sure that the latter actually installs prior to wiping Apple/XQuartz one.
 
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barracuda156 said:
If you could try VLC2, would be nice.

Mileage may vary :)
I find QMPlay2 vastly superior for video playback at the moment. However, looks like VLC working now.
FHD videos may not play (they do not for me, while they play fine in QMPlay2).

P. S. VLC is set to use X11 on old systems. I recommend wiping out system X11 and installing Macports xorg-server-legacy. Make sure that the latter actually installs prior to wiping Apple/XQuartz one.
Click to expand...

I'll get onto this asap. :)
 
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Hello,
I have the latest official MacPorts distribution installed and just tried to compile QMplay2 from barracuda156's repository but it fails at about the 99% of progress, attached the error log. It looks like related to something undeclared in the screensaver module.
 

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  • main.log.txt
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SnakeCoils said:
Hello,
I have the latest official MacPorts distribution installed and just tried to compile QMplay2 from barracuda156's repository but it fails at about the 99% of progress, attached the error log. It looks like related to something undeclared in the screensaver module.
Click to expand...

Thank you for reporting this. It fails because IOPMAssertionCreateWithName is available in 10.6+ (apparently 10a190 already has it, since no failure there).

I will add a fix today, hopefully.

UPD. Could you try this? https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/23676
 
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barracuda156 said:
Thank you for reporting this. It fails because IOPMAssertionCreateWithName is available in 10.6+ (apparently 10a190 already has it, since no failure there).

I will add a fix today, hopefully.

UPD. Could you try this? https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/23676
Click to expand...

Unfortunately it doesn't worked, I've taken a look in the log (I am not a programmer, just curious about how things works) and it seems the new patches were not applied. I have deleted the previous "files" and portfile in QmPlay2 directory of my local MacPorts repository (replacing them with the ones from your repository) then did a "sudo port clean qmplay2" before proceeding with rebuilt.
Attached you will find the latest log file.
 

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  • main.log.txt
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SnakeCoils said:
Unfortunately it doesn't worked, I've taken a look in the log (I am not a programmer, just curious about how things works) and it seems the new patches were not applied. I have deleted the previous "files" and portfile in QmPlay2 directory of my local MacPorts repository (replacing them with the ones from your repository) then did a "sudo port clean qmplay2" before proceeding with rebuilt.
Attached you will find the log latest log file.
Click to expand...

I do not really get why condition did not work, but anyway, could you try replacing those lines manually?
What should work is:
Code: 
m_okDisp = (IOPMAssertionCreate(kIOPMAssertPreventUserIdleDisplaySleep, kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, &m_idDisp) == kIOReturnSuccess);
m_okSys  = (IOPMAssertionCreate(kIOPMAssertPreventUserIdleSystemSleep,  kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, &m_idSys)  == kIOReturnSuccess);
I.e. drop those if-else-endif, just have these two lines in place of original (which fail to compile).

Just restart the build after modifying `src/gui/macOS/ScreenSaver.cpp`, do not change anything in the portfile (otherwise Macports gonna start the build from scratch).
 
SnakeCoils said:
Unfortunately it doesn't worked, I've taken a look in the log (I am not a programmer, just curious about how things works) and it seems the new patches were not applied. I have deleted the previous "files" and portfile in QmPlay2 directory of my local MacPorts repository (replacing them with the ones from your repository) then did a "sudo port clean qmplay2" before proceeding with rebuilt.
Attached you will find the latest log file.
Click to expand...

If you got a decent hardware and rebuilding does not take hours, maybe first try replacing `#if defined(__APPLE__) && (MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED < 1060)` with `#if defined(__APPLE__) && (MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED < 1060)` in the patch itself, and do a clean build.
Code: 
sudo port clean QMPlay2
sudo port -v install QMPlay2

(Sorry, I cannot test anything in 10.5 at the moment.)
 
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