Sunday, April 26, 2015

Debian Jessie Turns Stable

I know it's hard to hear me over the din of the roof-raising Debian release parties, but I'll try.

Debian Jessie turned stable today, so what does it mean for PowerPC users? It's been a two-year, sometimes harrowing ride for Jessie, but now that it's turned Stable, I think it's... okay. On Mac models where it works well, like my aluminum Powerbook, it's great and a nice improvement over Wheezy. Unfortunately some models experience serious bugs out of the box, but the good news is there are workarounds. On that subject, I've just updated my Debian install guide taken from my own experiences installing on a few different Macs.

Yes, there's a major sound bug affecting my G3 iBook, and according to reports, several other models, but there's a workaround. There are some severe graphics bugs, but there are workarounds. I'm hoping this is a time of transition for PowerPC Linux, where the right bug reports and testing will lead to a better-out-of-the-box experience around the corner.

I've seen people write that we shouldn't bother filing bug reports on KMS because KMS on PowerPC will never be fixed. I'm going to test that theory. I have a black screen of death issue with my iBook that requires disabling KMS, so I'll file a bug report on that and see where it goes (UPDATE: here's the bug report). On the sound bug front, a developer doing I2C work just popped in on the Debian PowerPC mailing list and offered to work on it, with the right assistance. If there's anyone with an afflicted machine who can compile custom kernels, I'm sure he'd appreciate your help. If it's gonna be me, theeeeeeen I guess I better learn how to compile custom kernels (UPDATE: I just compiled a custom kernel and am helping to debug kernel patches. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!).

Also, a shoutout should go to Ubuntu MATE's PPC maintainer for making patched Mesa binaries available that also work on Jessie.

Here are a couple of screenshots of my iBook's Openbox desktop (my Powerbook ain't all purtied up yet):

Openbox menu

Openbox Desktop
Posted by Dan at 12:33 PM
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14 comments:

  1. galgotApril 26, 2015 at 1:15 PM

    Funny, I've just installed Jessie on a Powerbook 17" A1107 today without knowing that :)
    First try standard install, with a Gnome desktop, went very bad... Wouldn't go even to the login window.
    Then tried an "expert install" , choosing all options by default.
    At a moment , choise was given to me for using five differents kernels. I chose "kernel PowerPC". the others options had versions nmrs and other things with the name, should have written that down... that one was just "kernel PowerPC"
    Also chose LXDE as wm. And it worked this time !
    then installed Windowmaker. Had no sound , but adding "snd-aoa-i2sbus" to /etc/modules solved that (Thanks PPC Luddite ).
    Still some problems, wicd doesn't work, and Pommed works more or less... Anyway configuration not finished.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DanApril 27, 2015 at 12:25 PM

      The snd-aoa-i2sbus trick was necessary on my Jan. '05 Powerbook, too. I also noticed my trackpad performance is dramatically better in Jessie, and KMS no longer disables my brightness keys.

      Delete
    2. galgotMay 1, 2015 at 2:02 PM

      Btw, do you have Pommed working on your Powerbook please ?

      Delete
    3. galgotMay 9, 2015 at 5:03 AM

      Btw, do you have Pommed working on your Powerbook please ?

      Delete
    4. DanMay 9, 2015 at 8:05 PM

      I don't use pommed. I use pbbuttonsd instead. To get pommed working, you first have to uninstall pbbuttonsd because they conflict.

      Delete
  2. rican-linuxApril 26, 2015 at 9:11 PM

    did you upgrade or did a fresh install?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DanApril 27, 2015 at 12:17 PM

      I wanted to go through the whole install process, so I saved all my configuration files and started fresh.

      Delete
  3. rican-linuxApril 27, 2015 at 11:28 AM

    Dan, compiling a custom kernel is very doable. Check take a look here

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    1. DanApril 27, 2015 at 12:19 PM

      Thanks. I've been reading through a few links, and what's slightly disturbing is they say different things. But I have the sound patch and an affected machine, so I'll make a go at it :)

      Delete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 8, 2016 at 12:18 AM

    hi Dan,

    can you Point me to the link the has the patch? I wanted to try my luck ;)

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    Replies
    1. DanJanuary 8, 2016 at 9:49 AM

      Links to the sound patches are on this page:

      https://wiki.debian.org/PowerPC/FAQ#Why_doesn.27t_my_sound_work.3F

      Also, I compiled a patched kernel myself that you can download here:

      http://ppcluddite.blogspot.com/2015/08/debian-kernel-with-sound-fix.html

      The patches work and it looks like they'll appear officially in the Stretch kernel.

      Delete
    2. AnonymousJanuary 11, 2016 at 11:27 PM

      So I tried the latest kernel for ppc 4.3.0-0.bpo.1-powerpc #1 Debian 4.3.3-5~bpo8+1 (2016-01-07) ppc GNU/Linux - but still there is no soundcard found on my ibook G4 (A1054):(

      Delete
  5. AnonymousFebruary 10, 2017 at 7:24 AM

    How did you get to install openbox? What mirror are you using? I don't have openbox, mate, kde, awesome, etc when I try to install with apt-get (apt-cache doesn't show them either)

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    Replies
    1. DanFebruary 10, 2017 at 11:32 PM

      I installed with aptitude install openbox, and the mirror was the default us.debian.org. Hmmm. Are you running Jessie, Stretch, or Sid?

      Delete

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