I am noticing there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and outright confusion floating around about installing debian (current) on PowerPC Apple systems. Current walkthroughs are telling people what seems to me to be the completely wrong way to go
about things. Older debian and other walkthroughs are no longer valid. People are following recipes from 2, 3, or 8 years ago, adding all the wrong apt sources and installing software from all over the place, thinking they are following the current
recommendations, which it seems to me, they are not.

Other distros are dropping PowerPC Apple systems, and people are looking for direction.

Given that this list is the defacto standard for the source of such info, I wonder if someone might agree to maintain a once-monthly “This is how…” FAQ or similar.

Even just:

1. which exact iso is the current recommended install iso for Apple PowerPC machines
2. whether to use 64bit on G5s or not
3. what is the current recommended setup for apt sources
4. how to get the common video cards working
5. how to get the b43 wifi working
6. how to get the sound working

Ideally something really brief, and recipe-like, for many new users to follow. All this info is out there, but in different places and not easy to cull into one spot.

This might solve a great number of questions out there, and bring in happy new users!

If anyone is interested, of course, in spearheading such a document.

Best,

Ken

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Ken Cunningham wront on 01/30/22 22:29:

I am noticing there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and outright confusion floating around about installing debian (current) on PowerPC Apple systems. Current walkthroughs are telling people what seems to me to be the completely wrong way to

go about things. Older debian and other walkthroughs are no longer valid. People are following recipes from 2, 3, or 8 years ago, adding all the wrong apt sources and installing software from all over the place, thinking they are following the current
recommendations, which it seems to me, they are not.

Other distros are dropping PowerPC Apple systems, and people are looking for direction.

Given that this list is the defacto standard for the source of such info, I wonder if someone might agree to maintain a once-monthly “This is how…” FAQ or similar.

Honestly, this should be on the debian.org documentation or manuals
pages. But it isn't, since PowerPC is no longer an officially supported architecture.

If I type "Debian PowerPC installation manual" into an Internet search
engine of my choice, I end up with e.g. https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/powerpc/, and yes, this is dated...

IMHO not this list would be the right place, but a link from debian.org
to some "unsupported" but available architectures and their
documentations...

There must be a link to "unsupported (but still around)" from within https://www.debian.org/doc/.

Just my 2¢.

In the meantime, yes, better here in on the mailing list than nowhere at
all...

Linux User #330250
(An inactive Power Mac owner, due to missing spare time...)

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Hi Ken!

On 1/30/22 22:29, Ken Cunningham wrote:

I am noticing there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and outright confusion floating
around about installing debian (current) on PowerPC Apple systems. Current walkthroughs are
telling people what seems to me to be the completely wrong way to go about things. Older
debian and other walkthroughs are no longer valid. People are following recipes from 2,
3, or 8 years ago, adding all the wrong apt sources and installing software from all over
the place, thinking they are following the current recommendations, which it seems to me,
they are not.

Since writing documentation involves quite some work, I can't currently do that. So, if anyone
wants to help, let me know. But also keep in mind that there are still some issues left to
be fixed in the installation system on Apple PowerMac.

I have explained a bit on the background here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2021/12/msg00032.html

Other distros are dropping PowerPC Apple systems, and people are looking for direction.

Given that this list is the defacto standard for the source of such info, I wonder if
someone might agree to maintain a once-monthly “This is how…” FAQ or similar.

Well, it always involves time and effort, there is no free lunch :-).

1. which exact iso is the current recommended install iso for Apple PowerPC machines

You can search the mailing list to find the images where people reported that they work.

2. whether to use 64bit on G5s or not

I'm not sure why this is a question? The ppc64 port is in very good shape and runs perfectly
find on the PowerMac G5. I don't see any reason not to use it.

3. what is the current recommended setup for apt sources

# binary default
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ unstable main
deb http://incoming.ports.debian.org/buildd/ unstable main
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ unreleased main

# source
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://incoming.debian.org/debian-buildd/ buildd-unstable main

4. how to get the common video cards working

That depends on your video card.

5. how to get the b43 wifi working

You have to use the b43-fwcutter tool.

6. how to get the sound working

Depends on your hardware. Sound works out of the box on my iBook G4.

Ideally something really brief, and recipe-like, for many new users to follow. All
this info is out there, but in different places and not easy to cull into one spot.

Well, the driver-related questions are not specific to PowerMacs. For example, if you
use an ATI/AMD video card, you need the firmware on both x86 and PowerPC machines and
you install them the same way.

This might solve a great number of questions out there, and bring in happy new users!

But it means time and effort that needs to be spent. Especially, since several of these
questions are not specific to PowerPC.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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Thanks.

I’m in great shape, everything running fairly well on my machines.

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems, from the 1,200 questions over and over and over about it on the Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199 wrong answers :> ).

Perhaps someone with writing skills and interest might be interested, in time.

Best to all,

Ken

On Jan 31, 2022, at 1:19 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

Hi Ken!

On 1/30/22 22:29, Ken Cunningham wrote:

I am noticing there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and outright confusion floating
around about installing debian (current) on PowerPC Apple systems. Current walkthroughs are
telling people what seems to me to be the completely wrong way to go about things. Older
debian and other walkthroughs are no longer valid. People are following recipes from 2,
3, or 8 years ago, adding all the wrong apt sources and installing software from all over
the place, thinking they are following the current recommendations, which it seems to me,
they are not.

Since writing documentation involves quite some work, I can't currently do that. So, if anyone
wants to help, let me know. But also keep in mind that there are still some issues left to
be fixed in the installation system on Apple PowerMac.

I have explained a bit on the background here:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2021/12/msg00032.html

Other distros are dropping PowerPC Apple systems, and people are looking for direction.

Given that this list is the defacto standard for the source of such info, I wonder if
someone might agree to maintain a once-monthly “This is how…” FAQ or similar.

Well, it always involves time and effort, there is no free lunch :-).

1. which exact iso is the current recommended install iso for Apple PowerPC machines

You can search the mailing list to find the images where people reported that they work.

2. whether to use 64bit on G5s or not

I'm not sure why this is a question? The ppc64 port is in very good shape and runs perfectly
find on the PowerMac G5. I don't see any reason not to use it.

3. what is the current recommended setup for apt sources

# binary default
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ unstable main
deb http://incoming.ports.debian.org/buildd/ unstable main
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports/ unreleased main

# source
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://incoming.debian.org/debian-buildd/ buildd-unstable main

4. how to get the common video cards working

That depends on your video card.

5. how to get the b43 wifi working

You have to use the b43-fwcutter tool.

6. how to get the sound working

Depends on your hardware. Sound works out of the box on my iBook G4.

Ideally something really brief, and recipe-like, for many new users to follow. All
this info is out there, but in different places and not easy to cull into one spot.

Well, the driver-related questions are not specific to PowerMacs. For example, if you
use an ATI/AMD video card, you need the firmware on both x86 and PowerPC machines and
you install them the same way.

This might solve a great number of questions out there, and bring in happy new users!

But it means time and effort that needs to be spent. Especially, since several of these
questions are not specific to PowerPC.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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You'd be perfect, Jeff, if you have the inclination.


Thing is, you could write it, Adrian could do a few technical
corrections when he has time if he sees something glaring go past, and
we would all see it go by once a month and could chime in with tweaks we discovered, if useful.


I suspect we'd all learn something in the process.

Ken


On 2022-01-31 08:16, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 11:09 AM Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks.

I’m in great shape, everything running fairly well on my machines.

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems, from the 1,200 questions over and over and over about it on the Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199 wrong answers :> ).

Perhaps someone with writing skills and interest might be interested, in time.

I'd be happy to help with writing. I enjoy writing docs for some reason.

I think the problem is, Debian does not have a good strategy for dissemination of long term information for PowerPC. They have a wiki
but there's little information about PowerPC. Instead, Debian places
the long term information on static web pages that are woefully out of
date. No one can edit the web pages except Debian admins, and they
don't do it. (I tried to get them to update it a couple of years ago.
It went nowhere).

A FAQ might be a good first step to triage the problem.

But as Adrian points out, the people with the access and the knowledge
don't have time to tend to it. That problem begs a crowd source
solution like a wiki. But then we are back to the problem of using
static web pages instead of a wiki.

Information management is hard.

Jeff

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On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 11:09 AM Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks.

I’m in great shape, everything running fairly well on my machines.

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems, from the 1,200 questions over and over and over about it on the Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199 wrong answers :> ).

Perhaps someone with writing skills and interest might be interested, in time.

I'd be happy to help with writing. I enjoy writing docs for some reason.

I think the problem is, Debian does not have a good strategy for
dissemination of long term information for PowerPC. They have a wiki
but there's little information about PowerPC. Instead, Debian places
the long term information on static web pages that are woefully out of
date. No one can edit the web pages except Debian admins, and they
don't do it. (I tried to get them to update it a couple of years ago.
It went nowhere).

A FAQ might be a good first step to triage the problem.

But as Adrian points out, the people with the access and the knowledge
don't have time to tend to it. That problem begs a crowd source
solution like a wiki. But then we are back to the problem of using
static web pages instead of a wiki.

Information management is hard.

Jeff

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
Hello,

Wiki like https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/ordinateur_compatible_ubuntu is
convenient to make a documentation but normal users will not participate because of wiki syntax.

I'm working on this project: https://framagit.org/InfoLibre/rapido

The goal of Rapido is to have the same thing than with DokuWiki but
without wiki or markdown syntax.

If you are interested about, I need help to code and translate.



Le 31/01/2022 à 17:30, Ken Cunningham a écrit :

You'd be perfect, Jeff, if you have the inclination.

Thing is, you could write it, Adrian could do a few technical
corrections when he has time if he sees something glaring go past, and
we would all see it go by once a month and could chime in with tweaks
we discovered, if useful.

I suspect we'd all learn something in the process.

Ken

On 2022-01-31 08:16, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 11:09 AM Ken Cunningham
<ken.cunningham.webuse@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks.

I’m in great shape, everything running fairly well on my machines.

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems,
from the 1,200 questions over and over and over about it on the
Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199 wrong answers :> ).

Perhaps someone with writing skills and interest might be
interested, in time.

I'd be happy to help with writing. I enjoy writing docs for some reason.

I think the problem is, Debian does not have a good strategy for
dissemination of long term information for PowerPC. They have a wiki
but there's little information about PowerPC. Instead, Debian places
the long term information on static web pages that are woefully out of
date. No one can edit the web pages except Debian admins, and they
don't do it. (I tried to get them to update it a couple of years ago.
It went nowhere).

A FAQ might be a good first step to triage the problem.

But as Adrian points out, the people with the access and the knowledge
don't have time to tend to it. That problem begs a crowd source
solution like a wiki. But then we are back to the problem of using
static web pages instead of a wiki.

Information management is hard.

Jeff

--
Passez à Linux :https://infolib.re

.--.
|o_o |
||_/ |
// \\ Envoyé depuis mon Linux
(| |)
/ \_ _/ \
\___)=(___/

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello,</p>
<p>Wiki like <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/ordinateur_compatible_ubuntu">https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/ordinateur_compatible_ubuntu</a>
is convenient to make a documentation but normal users will not
participate because of wiki syntax.</p>
<p>I'm working on this project:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://framagit.org/InfoLibre/rapido">https://framagit.org/InfoLibre/rapido</a></p>
<p>The goal of Rapido is to have the same thing than with DokuWiki
but without wiki or markdown syntax.</p>
<p>If you are interested about, I need help to code and translate.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix

On 2/1/22 10:30, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

On 1/31/22 17:09, Ken Cunningham wrote:

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems, from the 1,200 questions
over and over and over about it on the Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199
wrong answers :> ).

As I explained in [1], there is a reason why I am currently not yet producing working images
every time. Getting all the necessary bits and pieces into place requires lots of efforts due
to the amount of necessary quality assurance.

FWIW, everyone in these Facebook lists is welcome to join the mailing list here and ask their
questions.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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Hello Ken!

On 1/31/22 17:09, Ken Cunningham wrote:

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems, from the 1,200 questions
over and over and over about it on the Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199
wrong answers :> ).

As I explained in [1], there is a reason why I am currently not yet producing working images
every time. Getting all the necessary bits and pieces into place requires lots of efforts due
to the amount of necessary quality assurance.

I know that it's a frustrating situation, but configuring the bootloader on Apple PowerMacs is
unfortunately much more complicated than on computers with UEFI or U-Boot, for example.

Adrian

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2021/12/msg00032.html

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hello!

On 1/31/22 17:16, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

I think the problem is, Debian does not have a good strategy for dissemination of long term information for PowerPC. They have a wiki
but there's little information about PowerPC. Instead, Debian places
the long term information on static web pages that are woefully out of
date. No one can edit the web pages except Debian admins, and they
don't do it. (I tried to get them to update it a couple of years ago.
It went nowhere).

You can send submit requests to the Debian WWW team.

A FAQ might be a good first step to triage the problem.

But as Adrian points out, the people with the access and the knowledge
don't have time to tend to it. That problem begs a crowd source
solution like a wiki. But then we are back to the problem of using
static web pages instead of a wiki.

Well, the main problem is that the images are still work in progress. I
have simply not fixed all issues yet since the list of issues that needed
to be worked on was very long and there is still other stuff that breaks
from time to time that needs attention.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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On 2022-02-01 01:30, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hello Ken!

On 1/31/22 17:09, Ken Cunningham wrote:

But most people have no idea even what boot iso to use, it seems, from the 1,200 questions
over and over and over about it on the Linux on PowerPC Macs facebook group (and the 1,199
wrong answers :> ).

As I explained in [1], there is a reason why I am currently not yet producing working images
every time. Getting all the necessary bits and pieces into place requires lots of efforts due
to the amount of necessary quality assurance.

I know that it's a frustrating situation, but configuring the bootloader on Apple PowerMacs is
unfortunately much more complicated than on computers with UEFI or U-Boot, for example.

Adrian

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2021/12/msg00032.html

Indeed. I'm certainly familiar with all that, but I can tell you a great
many are not.

This would be exactly the reason for the FAQ (or similar).

The Facebook users (mostly) had no idea this mailing list existed, until
I started sending everyone here.  But even then, someone coming here
will not easily see that that they need to find a special iso to install
debian on PowerPC Macs, or which one it is.

All your excellent work deserves to be used! So make it easier for
people, is all I'm about here.

Ken

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On 2/1/22 18:05, Ken Cunningham wrote:

Indeed. I'm certainly familiar with all that, but I can tell you a great many are not.

This would be exactly the reason for the FAQ (or similar).

Well, the thing is that the whole thing is a work-in-progress, so it sounds a bit weird
to create documentation for something that is still incomplete.

The Facebook users (mostly) had no idea this mailing list existed, until I started
sending everyone here. But even then, someone coming here will not easily see that
that they need to find a special iso to install debian on PowerPC Macs, or which one
it is.

I understand your point. But in the end, it will just mean more work for me and I rather
want to spend my Debian work on fixing issues rather than writing documentation at the
moment.

All your excellent work deserves to be used! So make it easier for people, is all I'm about here.

I'm not arguing against that. If anyone wants to help with such an FAQ, feel free to start
one and I can provide input.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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Hi Ken,


Ken Cunningham wrote:

All your excellent work deserves to be used! So make it easier for
people, is all I'm about here.

I understand where you are. I have long experience with PPC and Linux
and yet an install was not easy, depending on the flux of packages

We could start with something very simple, a single email with most annotations. Some stuff should change rarely: grub, partitioning main
net cards. And, of course the "current best working ISOs" for 32bit and
64bit.

We shall write it, not Adrian, who, at most, can comment/fix it

Riccardo

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Perhaps you and Jeff (who expressed interest and has such skills) might work together on it?

Although there are lots of this and that’s about it, in the end, it would help a lot of people get going with less trouble.

Best,
K

On Feb 1, 2022, at 3:44 PM, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:

Hi Ken,

Ken Cunningham wrote:

All your excellent work deserves to be used! So make it easier for
people, is all I'm about here.

I understand where you are. I have long experience with PPC and Linux
and yet an install was not easy, depending on the flux of packages

We could start with something very simple, a single email with most annotations. Some stuff should change rarely: grub, partitioning main
net cards. And, of course the "current best working ISOs" for 32bit and 64bit.

We shall write it, not Adrian, who, at most, can comment/fix it

Riccardo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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