Trisquel on Big Endian PowerPC

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megurineturilli
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Iscritto: 01/10/2012

Since I am migrating away from x86, I am looking for ways to get Trisquel running on the future GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC notebook. The first step is doing a port of Trisquel to ppc64be/POWER7. One day my Thinkpad X200 will break, and I need to be prepared for that day. The already existing ppc64le port cannot run. Since U have a Talos II, I can use that one for development and testing. Next I'll plan to upgrade the AMD GPU with one based on Raptor Kestrel, so the PowerPC notebook can meet the criteria for Respects Your Freedom. I also liked the music in the Kestrel Video like the ports of audio software for GNU/Linux on IBM Power (ppc64le).

https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/
https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/File:Kestrel_Demo_OCP_Virtual_2021.webm
https://ryf.fsf.org/
https://github.com/poweraudio

jxself
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Iscritto: 09/13/2010

Linux-libre is already compiled for big endian so that's a start. It requires POWER4 or newer: https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/freesh.en.html
Doing the whole distro would probably be very difficult, much like keeping i386 alive, since upstream Ubuntu does not support this.
The people power is the most important part and I think is why i386 didn't continue. Is the big endian port something you'd maintain in the long-term?
The Trisquel project would probably need appropriate big endian hardware to compile on and be looked after. Do you have any that could be donated for Trisquel's purposes?

megurineturilli
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Iscritto: 01/10/2012

The hardware might also support a subset of little endian, I will investigate when I get it.