The PowerPC Debian Wiki

[Jeroen Diederen]

jeroen@debian:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i ice_6.0.6_all.deb
[sudo] password for jeroen:
Selecting previously unselected package ice.
(Reading database ... 249158 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack ice_6.0.6_all.deb ...
Unpacking ice (6.0.6) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ice:
ice depends on python3-bs4; however:
Package python3-bs4 is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package ice (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.24-1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.64) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
ice
jeroen@debian:~/Downloads$ sudo apt --fix-broken install
apt
Usage: apt command [options]
apt help command [options]

Commands:
add-repository - Add entries to apt sources.list
autoclean - Erase old downloaded archive files
autoremove - Remove automatically all unused packages
build - Build binary or source packages from sources
build-dep - Configure build-dependencies for source packages
changelog - View a package's changelog
check - Verify that there are no broken dependencies
clean - Erase downloaded archive files
contains - List packages containing a file
content - List files contained in a package
deb - Install a .deb package
depends - Show raw dependency information for a package
dist-upgrade - Upgrade the system by removing/installing/upgrading packages
download - Download the .deb file for a package
edit-sources - Edit /etc/apt/sources.list with your preferred text editor
dselect-upgrade - Follow dselect selections
full-upgrade - Same as 'dist-upgrade'
held - List all held packages
help - Show help for a command
hold - Hold a package
install - Install/upgrade packages
list - List packages based on package names
policy - Show policy settings
purge - Remove packages and their configuration files
recommends - List missing recommended packages for a particular package
rdepends - Show reverse dependency information for a package
reinstall - Download and (possibly) reinstall a currently installed package
remove - Remove packages
search - Search for a package by name and/or expression
show - Display detailed information about a package
showhold - Same as 'held'
showsrc - Display all the source package records that match the given package name
source - Download source archives
sources - Same as 'edit-sources'
unhold - Unhold a package
update - Download lists of new/upgradable packages
upgrade - Perform a safe upgrade
version - Show the installed version of a package

 

[z970]

That is definitely not supposed to happen, certainly not when I last tried.

That's PPC Debian 10, right? Your sources are set to the snapshot repos? APT 1.8, or something prior?

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

You are right, this is MintPPC, based on sid.

Edit:
Sorry my mistake, it works fine on my G4. I tried to install it on the iMac G5. I had Ice built before but it won't work with arctic fox. You can see ice in the menu and can add an item. It relies on browsers I don't use, like firefox, chrome.

 

[z970]

I knew that...

I wonder if we could modify it to some degree, to leverage Arctic Fox instead of ex., Firefox. Maybe there's a configuration file somewhere.

That would effectively turn into AquaWeb for Linux, or Surf for Debian 10...

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

I tried that with the developer of ice, didn't work (yet).

 

[wicknix]

Ok, i made a little headway with midori. It's quick, but only works with javascript disabled. Great for general forum browsing etc. Once javascript is enabled it refuses to load any pages. Anyway, i'm attaching it here if anyone wants to play with it. Just rename .zip to .deb. Install your default midori (to pull in required deps) on ubuntu 16 or debian 10, then dpkg -i this over the top of it. It's built from it's current (not release) git repo, hence the 9.0 version number. Then go to prefs (hamburger menu top right) and disable javascript to start surfing.

Cheers

 

[z970]

Updated the Debian Ports Archive Keyring link to point to the latest version.

 

[sparty411]

Can anyone tell me what the current state of the Debian Sid packages is? Am I going to completely hose my install on my iBook G4 I haven't used in a few months, if I apt upgrade?

 

[z970]

Can anyone tell me what the current state of the Debian Sid packages is? Am I going to completely hose my install on my iBook G4 I haven't used in a few months, if I apt upgrade?

Based on my past experiences with Sid, I'd say you're fine.

At first (late 2018), my go-to way of installing Sid was usually via upgrade from Jessie, which was a 3 year package difference, and it always worked fine.

So if anything at all, a couple months' difference can't do too much.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Don't update if you have a powermac G5. There are problems with the latest kernel. Imac iSight G5 (which I own) does not have this problem though.

 

[sparty411]

Based on my past experiences with Sid, I'd say you're fine.

At first (late 2018), my go-to way of installing Sid was usually via upgrade from Jessie, which was a 3 year package difference, and it always worked fine.

So if anything at all, a couple months' difference can't do too much.

Upgraded without a hitch, thanks 😀
[automerge]1576076473[/automerge]

Don't update if you have a powermac G5. There are problems with the latest kernel. Imac iSight G5 (which I own) does not have this problem though.

I haven't bothered with PPC64 for a while now. I tried back in the summer on my PMG5, and it would kernel panic at boot time.

 

[z970]

Updated the Arctic Fox installer to point to version 19.

 

[Bouton888]

I finally got a stable sid install on my DC 2.0 G5 by using the May 2018 CD (so it's a bit of a hybrid install; 64-bit kernel but powerpc apps), and the only nouveau graphics glitches I've noticed are when running Arctic Fox on a video-heavy or image-heavy website. Not only do the videos and images glitch out to static, but the desktop does as well. I haven't tried checking the hardware acceleration option in the browser (if it even has one. EDIT- it does. I just checked on my 1ghz TiBook running sid; beautifully, I might add, with an mSATA SSD/adapter combo), but will be doing so once I arrive home today.

helo which one should i install on the tibook? i tried a few but no success

 

[z970]

Fixed all the user agents. Changed the IE11 UA from some incorrect Chrome one (no idea how I let that slip), to the actual correct one, and changed all the Surf ones from iOS 12.2 to Android 2.2, as I'm finding A2.2 tends to yield better and more consistent results as far as mobile sites go.

Thanks to arn for the sticky. Hopefully this way people will now be less lost...

 

[wicknix]

Well, i finally gave in and put bullseye/sid on my mac mini g4. Installed and updated without a hitch. Used an older netinstall.iso as i wanted yaboot instead of grub. There are a few packages missing that ubuntu had (no browser-plugin-vlc and no nm-applet for instance), but otherwise it's working well. Thanks for the wiki. It came in handy for a few things.

Cheers

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

Well, i finally gave in and put bullseye/sid on my mac mini g4. Installed and updated without a hitch. Used an older netinstall.iso as i wanted yaboot instead of grub. There are a few packages missing that ubuntu had (no browser-plugin-vlc and no nm-applet for instance), but otherwise it's working well. Thanks for the wiki. It came in handy for a few things.

View attachment 889601

Cheers

I thought you were hooked to Lubuntu, why did you make the switch ?

 

[wicknix]

I had a spare parts mac mini I revived. Figured it could be my experimental unit to try different things without killing my other installs.

 

[Jeroen Diederen]

It'll be interesting to see whether the Debian sid behaves according to your expectations as compared to Lubuntu.

 

[wicknix]

First impressions:

1) Installation is nowhere near as easy as ubuntu-ppc. Before they spin the iso's they should at least fix the installation repos to point to the proper ports repos. I also had to use an older sid iso which still had yaboot because grub isn't 100% working the way it should (like with void-ppc, where it works out of the box without work-a-rounds) but in all honestly i prefer yaboot anyway.
2) I understand Sid is unstable, and may not have all packages/deps built and may be buggy. So i cant really compare software availability & stability as that's kind of a wash.
3) See #2. Some software just crashes or doesn't work properly. (surf & midori for instance)

All in all, everything is working pretty good. Ubuntu also had some quirks (after install), but post install tweaks are expected with any distro.

I'll still stick with Lubuntu 16.04.6 until April 2021 when it's LTS support EOL's on my other machines as they are stable and set up the way i want, but i'll keep playing with Sid on this mac mini.

Cheers

 

[z970]

3) See #2. Some software just crashes or doesn't work properly. (surf & midori for instance)

To my knowledge, Surf 2.0 doesn't work correctly on x86 Debian 10 either. Thus, I would not say this is a PowerPC / Sid issue. And given all my prior experiences, Midori 6 and up has always been more or less "twitchy", anyway. Hit or miss.

Even under better conditions, these are not usually shining examples of perfectly stable applications.

I'll still stick with Lubuntu 16.04.6 until April 2021 when it's LTS support EOL's on my other machines as they are stable and set up the way i want, but i'll keep playing with Sid on this mac mini.

Debian Bullseye should be out a little while after that. Assuming the Ports repos continue to blow off the stable releases for ppc, I'll give it the same treatment I gave Buster when it released. That is to say, the snapshot repos will be captured and advertised just before development on Sid is restarted, in turn producing what is essentially the 11.0 repos in place of an officially supported stable release.

Clever little system, I must say.

-

Made some adjustments to the Downloads sector. Looks nicer now, slightly more consistent.

Maybe I'll integrate MintPPC and Lubuntu 12/16R if I ever get free time... Of course, other users would be warmly welcomed to at least get the ball rolling if they feel like it.

@wicknix, if you could keep building .debs of succeeding versions of Arctic Fox, I can scrap the installer and just link to those, which would also make the Software section less cluttered.

 

[Doq]

Sounds a little superfluous, but has anybody gotten Plymouth (the boot splash) to work at all? Debian 10 specifically. I set a splash (with -R to rebuild initrd) and despite this the splash doesn't work from preview or reboot, it just falls back to text boot.

 

[z970]

@Doq I haven't. Although then again, I've never tried.

-

Adjusted the manual partitioning guide for simpler instruction. I need to add a proper Ubiquity version for the Ubuntu live environments, again unless anyone would like to go ahead and do that for me...

 

[z970]

It seems the September forum software update broke the [ CODE ] boxes, spilling formatting information into the normal viewing space. Those will need to be converted into [ QUOTE ] boxes, which do not appear to have this issue.

In other news...

Finally added a Community Distributions section to the Distributions category, including choices like MintPPC by @Jeroen Diederen, Fienix by Mr. Casey C., Lubuntu 16.04 Remix by @wicknix, and Debian Sid Remix by also @wicknix.

The rest of the Wiki has not yet been updated to accommodate this (testing, troubleshooting, etc.) due to lack of time, so they are all as of now unsupported, unfortunately.

We've come a long way, folks. Here's to another year of innovation and discovery!

 

[adamjackson]

I'm sure someone knows whY I'm wrong
downloaded ubuntu-16.04.5-server-powerpc.iso & ubuntu-14.04.6-server-powerpc.iso

downloaded balenaEtcher-1.5.76.dmg

wrote both (separate occasions) to a USB drive

Command, Opt O, F and booted from the drive that has a nice penguin logo

"CD-ROM not found" or can't boot whatever.

I found a few online guides but since I don't know the name of the drive or the ISO without a lot of trial and error, I think "m just going to buy some blank DVD-R drives, right? faster to just burn the ISO to a DVD?

This is a MDD FW800 G4 BTW.

 

[z970]

@adamjackson If you did a Cmd + Opt + O + F, that will put you into Open Firmware, which is a CLI. Unless you entered multi-boot, how did you boot from a drive with a penguin logo? Seeing that should have required the boot picker, which is accessed with just Opt (not Opt + Cmd + O + F).

You can burn them to disc if you wish, but if you followed the Wiki's USB boot instructions, installing via USB is usually faster and pretty straightforward.

Also, the Ubuntu 16.04 download offered in Distributions is supposed to be of 16.04.6, not 16.04.5.