Arctic Fox

AmigaOne X5000 platform specific issues related to Linux only.
Roland
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Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by Roland »

xeno74 wrote: Many thanks for Arctic Fox 27.9.18. I successfully installed it today and it works. I updated Greasemonkey as well and it also works. :-)
How can Greasemonkey be updated...? There is a tic for automatic update in it's preferences, but it does not seem to work... I have currently Greasemonkey 3.8.
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caseycullen
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Location: Madison, WI USA
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Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by caseycullen »

Roland wrote:
xeno74 wrote: Many thanks for Arctic Fox 27.9.18. I successfully installed it today and it works. I updated Greasemonkey as well and it also works. :-)
How can Greasemonkey be updated...? There is a tic for automatic update in it's preferences, but it does not seem to work... I have currently Greasemonkey 3.8.
If you're using Fienix you can update greasemonkey using Synaptic.
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xeno74
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Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by xeno74 »

Maybe Arctic Fox needs the library "libatomic" on Fedora PPC64. You can install it with "sudo dnf install libatomic".
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
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xeno74
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Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by xeno74 »

Image

Hi All,

I was able to compile Arctic Fox 27.9.18 for Debian 10 PowerPCSPE today.

The 'PowerPCSPE' architecture is a binary-incompatible variant of PowerPC/POWER designed and supported by NXP (Freescale) and IBM. It is also known under the trade names "e500"/"MPC8500" and "e200"/"MPC5xx". The A-EON AmigaOne A1222 (Tabor) based on the PowerPCSPE architecture.

In particular, the 'PowerPCSPE' architecture lacks the classic FPU with dedicated FPRs found on most other PowerPC systems. It is replaced with a set of "SPE" instructions which perform floating-point operations on the integer registers.

The "e500v2"-series chips have 64-bit GPRs, where the high 32-bits are accessible only via the special "SPE" instructions, allowing them to make efficient use of the "double" datatype.

I had to remove the AltiVec source code from Arctic Fox because the instructions for the "SPE" operations overlap with the AltiVec instructions. It's not possible to compile Arctic Fox with its AltiVec source code on Debian PowerPCSPE.

I added "-mcpu=8548 -mtune=8548 -mspe" to the gcc and g++ options. I configured the target to "powerpc-unknown-linux-gnuspe" in the second build.

Additionally I had to use GCC 4.9.2 instead of the default GCC 8 because Arctic Fox doesn't compile with GCC 8.

I had some kernel crashes (invalid memory access) during the compilation of Arctic Fox with the latest mainline vanilla kernel 5.3. I switched to the stable longterm kernel 4.4.189 with Freescale patches. After that the kernel crashes are gone.

.mozconfig:

Code: Select all

# This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
# License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
# file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.

export CC="gcc -flax-vector-conversions -O3 -falign-loops=16 -falign-functions=16 -falign-labels=16 -falign-jumps=16 -mcpu=8548 -mtune=8548 -mspe"
export CXX="g++ -flax-vector-conversions -fpermissive -O3 -falign-loops=16 -falign-functions=16 -falign-labels=16 -falign-jumps=16 -mcpu=8548 -mtune=8548 -mspe"
export LDFLAGS="-latomic"

mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/obj-ff-dbg

ac_add_options --target=powerpc-unknown-linux-gnuspe
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-updater
ac_add_options --enable-mozril-geoloc
ac_add_options --disable-webrtc
ac_add_options --disable-safe-browsing
ac_add_options --disable-parental-controls
ac_add_options --enable-release
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi
ac_add_options --disable-eme
ac_add_options --disable-gamepad
ac_add_options --enable-dbus
ac_add_options --disable-gio
ac_add_options --disable-pulseaudio
ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-install-strip
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --with-branding=browser/branding/arcticfox
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --disable-jemalloc
Arctic Fox for PowerPCSPE is very important because there isn't a new Firefox version available for the PowerPCSPE architecture. There is an old version of iceweasel 31.3.0esr available but it has problems with some websites.

Downloads:
Screenshot of Arctic Fox 27.9.18 on Debian 10 PowerPCSPE:

Image

Cheers,
Christian
http://www.amigalinux.org
http://www.supertuxkart-amiga.de

Running Linux on AmigaONEs can require some tinkering.
Roland
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Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by Roland »

I have been lately using Arctic Fox for playing Youtube livestreams and videos. The highest resolution I have reached is 480p, while 720HD is clearly too slow to use. Is there any way around this barrier in X5000...? I already have VLC plugin installed, and I also have in my X5000 2x4GB Dimms which run at CL8 (fastest possible?).

Is Arctic Fox using hard disk for Video buffering, or only RAM? If it is using normally hd, is there a way to force it to use RAM?

How about the X5000/40 with quadcore processor - what is the maximum resolution reached with it? I know that some veinards here are already using it with the excuse of being a Beta-tester ;-).
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caseycullen
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Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by caseycullen »

Roland wrote:I have been lately using Arctic Fox for playing Youtube livestreams and videos. The highest resolution I have reached is 480p, while 720HD is clearly too slow to use. Is there any way around this barrier in X5000...? I already have VLC plugin installed, and I also have in my X5000 2x4GB Dimms which run at CL8 (fastest possible?).

Is Arctic Fox using hard disk for Video buffering, or only RAM? If it is using normally hd, is there a way to force it to use RAM?

How about the X5000/40 with quadcore processor - what is the maximum resolution reached with it? I know that some veinards here are already using it with the excuse of being a Beta-tester ;-).
What is your graphics card? In addition to VLC-plugin you also must use Greasemonkey and ViewTube for hardware acceleration.
I regularly stream YouTube HD video with no problem on my X5000.
Does your YouTube interface look the same as mine, with the menus and buttons right on top of the video? If it does not, you do not have Greasemonkey and ViewTube installed correctly.
Image
Roland
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Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by Roland »

caseycullen wrote: What is your graphics card? In addition to VLC-plugin you also must use Greasemonkey and ViewTube for hardware acceleration. I regularly stream YouTube HD video with no problem on my X5000.
I have a HD 5450. I had not realized those packages are also for acceleration... I though they were only needed for downloading videos.
I had earlier both Greasemonkey and Viewtube installed but the latter was missing now. I was not able to reinstall it as the Fienix Deposit server is down... (checked with ping) Hope it will be back soon.
Does your YouTube interface look the same as mine, with the menus and buttons right on top of the video? If it does not, you do not have Greasemonkey and ViewTube installed correctly.
Yes, when I had both pacakages installed, the interface was similar. But when I run a video, I was not able to get it on a 'clean' full screen, there was still some disturbing elements outside the actual video screen.

BTW, I just noticed that the add-ons manager of Arctic Fox 27.9.18 (from Fienix Depot) is not functional... It does not show at all the option for installing new add-ons. For comparison, the 'stand-alone' version of AF 27.9.18 does not have this problem.
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caseycullen
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Location: Madison, WI USA
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Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by caseycullen »

Roland wrote:
caseycullen wrote: What is your graphics card? In addition to VLC-plugin you also must use Greasemonkey and ViewTube for hardware acceleration. I regularly stream YouTube HD video with no problem on my X5000.
I have a HD 5450. I had not realized those packages are also for acceleration... I though they were only needed for downloading videos.
I had earlier both Greasemonkey and Viewtube installed but the latter was missing now. I was not able to reinstall it as the Fienix Deposit server is down... (checked with ping) Hope it will be back soon.
Does your YouTube interface look the same as mine, with the menus and buttons right on top of the video? If it does not, you do not have Greasemonkey and ViewTube installed correctly.
Yes, when I had both pacakages installed, the interface was similar. But when I run a video, I was not able to get it on a 'clean' full screen, there was still some disturbing elements outside the actual video screen.

BTW, I just noticed that the add-ons manager of Arctic Fox 27.9.18 (from Fienix Depot) is not functional... It does not show at all the option for installing new add-ons. For comparison, the 'stand-alone' version of AF 27.9.18 does not have this problem.
The server is back up. Sorry about that!
I'm not sure what you mean by the Add-Ons Manager is not functional. Do you mean the Add-On Manager doesn't launch at all? Or that the Add-On Manager comes up in a new tab but there is not a function to "Get New Add-Ons"? I don't recall that function being there, but you can install any add-on compatible with v27 of Pale Moon from https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/.
Roland
Posts: 825
Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by Roland »

caseycullen wrote: The server is back up. Sorry about that!
Ok, thanks! I will try again... But what package should I install to get again the ViewTube? There was not any package directly with that name when I checked yesterday.
I'm not sure what you mean by the Add-Ons Manager is not functional. Do you mean the Add-On Manager doesn't launch at all? Or that the Add-On Manager comes up in a new tab but there is not a function to "Get New Add-Ons"? I don't recall that function being there, but you can install any add-on compatible with v27 of Pale Moon from https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/.
I mean that the "Get New Add-Ons" function is missing. It is anyway present in Christian's stand-alone version of AF, and it also works there.
- Roland -
Roland
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Joined: Tue May 02, 2017 7:23 am

Re: Arctic Fox 27.9.12 (Firefox 63.0) a fork of Pale Moon

Post by Roland »

The depot was now working, so I did the following operations:

- removed totally Arctic Fox (for some reason SpiderWeb was simultaneously installed, I wonder why...?)
- installed again Arctic Fox
- reinstalled GreaseMonkey

Now the GreaseMonkey is active in Add-Ons, and ViewTube is also visble there. But when I open some video from Youtube, the user interface is still the standard (no menus etc. over the video), and there is obviously no acceleration (720HD is still slow). What might be wrong...?
- Roland -
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