X1000 success with CruxPPC and MintPPC Linux Distros

[Stephen Robinson]

What are the comparative differences between Debian, Crux and Mint Distos theses days?

[PatW]

@PatW

Hoho! Wel done and very interesting!

Did you find a CFLAGS optimized for the PA6T or did you use a generic PPC64+Altivec one?

Hi Dave

I built it with the default CFLAGS but I think I can optimize with CFLAGS set as:

CFLAGS="-mcpu=pa6t -mtune=pa6t -maltivec -mabi=altivec -fno-strict-aliasing -O2 -pipe"

I need to redo the installation to document it so I try with the new CFLAGS this time and see what happens.


Pat

[PatW]

What are the comparative differences between Debian, Crux and Mint Distos theses days?

Hi Stephen

MintPPC uses either a Debian Squeeze (v9) or Wheezy (v11) base with the x86 Mint LXDE desktop and tools ported over. The developer has done a really good job and it is very slick and fast. It is comparable to the Debian installation in that it uses the Debian NetInstall CD image with just a small change to the CFE bootargs. Debian and MintPPC are relatively easy to setup and use and a binary distros.

On the other hand CRUX and Gentoo are source based distros that are more complicated to install as they don't offer a conventional installer. CRUX is a minimalist distro that aims to keep things simple and uses Fluxbox as the default Window Manager. It also come with a small set of official ports (packages) and assumes that you know what you are doing in relation to partitioning, kernel compilation etc and that you are comfortable at the command line. Sadly at the moment the PPC port is suspended (as opposed to discontinued - hopefully it may restart in the near future). The CRUX team have a very good history of supporting recent non-Apple PPC hardware e.g. Pegasos 1 and 2, Efika 5200B, SAM440EP and SAM460, YDL PowerStation etc.

Gentoo is similar to CRUX but has a detailed handbook and offers a larger set of official ports and (probably) has a larger userbase.

It should also be possible to install Fedora (I have some ideas and hope to try them out later in the week.) Fedora is interesting as there is a renewed effort after a hiatus from F12 to F16 due to the PPC port being classified as a secondary architecture. The port has a Red Hat release engineer working on it with the community team.

CentOS are also planning on releasing CentOS 6.3 for POWER - this will be their first full PPC release if it happens - they previously had a beta v4 release. Initially it will be targeted at POWER7 but they are open to other PPC platforms.

All in all the linux future looks bright for PPC


Pat

[davebraco]

PatW,

Thank you for the details and for all your tests.

I'm looking forward to your install documents.

[thawk]

IIRC Gentoo is source based and therefore offers the latest revisions of available software packages.
My question is: Does 3D work on Gentoo for Radeon HD in hardware?

Fedora 16 is available for PPC as well. Is there anyone who was able to get it running?

[mechanic]

While on the subject of different distros and manuals............

I just installed Debian on a separate PATA drive. Instead of following the suggested places (as usual) to keep the kernels, I made a small FAT partition on the drive, named it 'fat' and use that for booting.

It seems this should work (?) for a single drive as well.

For the boot menu command I use;

boot -elf -noints -fatfs ide1.0:vmlinux39

[davebraco]

Gentoo is a source based distro, you can choose between a stable or an unstable branch.

I'm not a developer nor a linux expert but :

The big advantage is that it can be tailored for a very specific CPU (if supported by GCC). The kernel and all binaries will be compiled for your CPU. I've installed Gentoo on not common CPU such as AMD Geode, VIA epia or old pentium II and saw a big difference compared to regular distro. If you have a common CPU, you will probably notice less difference.

It's more difficult to kept it up to date (need to compile everything) but it's my best experience with a Linux distro : total control and optimisation (well, as much as linux can be...)

I've looked a little bit after some information on tailored linux config for PA6T without much success.
More over the PA6T is not mentioned in GCC documentation :
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.7.0 ... PC-Options

I did'nt looked for the specific kernel options for the PA6T but given the difference between a G4/G5 and a PA6T, it will be great when good GCC cflags (and may specific make.conf USE= for the X1000) parameters will be found. It could speed up the whole system I think.

If i had to install Linux on the X1000 it will be a optimized Gentoo one. (so I hope PatW will succeed )

More information about cflags : http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Safe_Cflags

[sundown]

Come on guys, whats the secret to installing Debian Mint?
I tried a live DVD on my laptop & liked what I saw.

Ken

[trevordick]

Come on guys, whats the secret to installing Debian Mint?
I tried a live DVD on my laptop & liked what I saw.

Ken

Ken,

The installation guide will be upated and a new version will be available for download.

Trevor

[PatW]

I've looked a little bit after some information on tailored linux config for PA6T without much success.
More over the PA6T is not mentioned in GCC documentation :
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.7.0 ... PC-Options

I did'nt looked for the specific kernel options for the PA6T but given the difference between a G4/G5 and a PA6T, it will be great when good GCC cflags (and may specific make.conf USE= for the X1000) parameters will be found. It could speed up the whole system I think.

Hi Dave

It's a pity alright that there doesn't appear to be specific flags for pa6t in gcc I came across this post http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2008-01/msg00854.html which suggested that gcc might have been patched a few years ago but it doesn't look like the patches were accepted (I haven't followed the rest of the thread).

The best CFLAGS are probably ="-mcpu=power4 -mtune=power4 -maltivec -mabi=altivec -fno-strict-aliasing -O2 -pipe".

I have just submitted the initial draft of installation instructions for Gentoo to Trevor this evening.


Pat