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Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and community (Linux.com)
Linux.com continues UDS
coverage with a look at plans for the Ubuntu and Kubuntu desktops, the
future of PowerPC, and how Ubuntu is working with local community teams.
"One of the things that makes Ubuntu so successful is the community
that's formed around the distribution. Out of about 140 attendees for the
summit, only 30 were employed by Canonical to work on Ubuntu. The rest were
there because of personal or commercial interests in Ubuntu. Shuttleworth
and company seem to have done a pretty good job of bridging the commercial
and community divide, and community building and governance was a major
topic at the summit."
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Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and community (Linux.com) Posted Nov 17, 2006 17:44 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link] its too bad to see them considering dropping support for powerpc. to me one of the key attractions of free software is the notion that it is not productized in the traditional sense that there is any pressure or even acceptance of the "upgrade cycle", which apple in particular pushes incessantly.
all of those g4 powerbooks (etc) are perfectly fine useable machines. its unfortunate that they may not be up to the task of supporting apple's bloated eyecandy, but there is absolutely no reason why this perfectly useful hardware should be landfilled. i was hoping user-friendly systems like ubuntu would be at the forefront of giving this hardware a new lease on life.
(a happy pentium3/256mb debian user)
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and community (Linux.com) Posted Nov 17, 2006 18:10 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I second your comment very heartily. If they do drop PPC support, I guess I'll just switch over to Debian, or perhaps Slackintosh, to be consistent with my Intel boxes. :-)
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 17, 2006 21:57 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] It is not productized in the traditional sense that there is any pressure or even acceptance of the "upgrade cycle"... It's a myth. The free software is done in exactly the same way as traditional software. It feels push of the "upgrade cycle" just like the proprietary software does. Why do you think all this talks about binary ATI/nVidia drivers ? Why there are already binary drivers on the install CD ? Because new hardware is not well supported by free drivers... Now - with free software you are free to take the source and make your own distribution, that's the luxury of the free software. But why do you expect that anyone will provide support for the hwardware they don't use (apple's software is rarity in the On the other hand the question about ATI/nVidia support is not very clear: there are chance that lack of proper support by most distributions will finally push ATI/nVidia to release at least free kernel drivers with binary-only X.org drivers (like Intel did) while "good Ubuntu's support" will legitimize binary drivers for sure (Canonical does it, why can not RedHat) so I'm not sure if it's good idea to include said drivers (parhaps some kernel copyrightholder will sue Canonical and stop this nonsense?)... Not so with "PPC support" story. It's quite clear-cut: it's obsoleted legacy plafrom with tiny market share - there are no way Canonical will be able to do anything about it (Apple discontinued PPC support and Canonical does not do hardware), so why will it need to spend time and effort to make the stuff used by smaller and smaller percentage of users ? i was hoping user-friendly systems like ubuntu would be at the forefront of giving this hardware a new lease on life It's not easy to make the distribution which works well for the "latest and greatest" hardware and for the obsoleted one. It's one thing to provide some different selection of packages (like Xubuntu does) - you still can test everythng with the new hardware, you don't need to keep old boxes around - and it's totally another thing to provide support for abandoned incompatible hardware (like PPC boxes).
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 17, 2006 22:26 UTC (Fri) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] I'm not sure why you said that Intel has released "free kernel drivers with binary X.org drivers". The Intel video driver stack is free software from end to end. The only binary blob remaining is for turning on and off the Macrovision content protection on the TV output, and that blob is optional.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 17, 2006 22:42 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] I think perhaps we should more properly refer to the platform in question as "Mac PPC" or "Apple PPC", since I doubt very much that IBM and others would agree with PowerPC in general being referred to as an "obsoleted legacy platform with tiny market share". Yellow Dog is planning to offer a Linux distribution for the PlayStation 3, which is based on a PPC variant--a very powerful one. PPC processors are being used in quite a few new device designs. Just because Steve Jobs got pissy that IBM wouldn't pay attention to his temper tantrums doesn't mean that the PowerPC platform is "obsolete" or a "legacy" platform.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 18, 2006 9:58 UTC (Sat) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] I'm not sure the Cell processor is a very powerful platform for a genericdesktop computer. Basically it's a G5 which is reasonable fast, and additional 6 or so number crunching cells. These can run in parallel to the actual G5. But to do that the software needs to support them explicitely, i.e. there must be extra programs compiled with a special compiler which are loaded into these cells and then executed there. On a normal Linux installation they will simply lie around unused. Alex
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 18, 2006 13:54 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Call can be used as a basis for a desktop computer. But it's not. It's used in PS3 and some other specialized projects. They all are unsuitable for normal desktop. It's quite possible that some version of Linux (may be even Ubuntu-based) will be developed for PS3. But it's sure as hell will not be "normal" desktop. 256MiB of XDR DRAM, Cell and RSX with 256MiB of VRAM - it's very interesting combination, but it's sure as hell will need different approach then "general-purpose" desktop system. Memory-hogs like beagle will need serious trimming-down (or outright replacement).
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 18, 2006 14:15 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well you don't use Beagle. That's that.
Xubuntu will work nicely for such a setup.
From Linux point of view PS3 isn't very radical at all. It's just a 3.2ghz (abiet about the equivelent power to a 1.2ghz G4) PowerPC machine with 256 megs of ram. What is so difficult about that?
I am sure that at least 4 people who posted to LWN today have machines with less hardware then that.
In fact it will be very easy to support for a distro. The hardware is identical for all machines. You can create a basic image that you know will run well and you just allow people to download that. Change the hostname, give it a password and that's it. No hardware to configure. No settings to manage. No special setup needed for the network interface. All this can be made to work 100% correctly in a test PS3 and it will work identically well on every machine produced.
It would be much easier to support then your average x86 PC. By a order of a maganitude easier.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 17, 2006 23:14 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > it's obsoleted legacy plafrom No it isn't. There's still the Genesi Pegasos, the IBM System p, the LinkStation, TeraStation, and Kuro Box, and the briQ. Also, there's the Cell processor, which Terra Soft Solutions says they will be supporting in the next version of Yellow Dog Linux.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 18, 2006 11:12 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Also keep in mind that in modern IBM terms:
POWER == PowerPC.
At least for software compatability-wise. It is a bit inaccurate to consider the platform that is still in very active development and is popular from everything from embedded devices to the worlds supercomputes is obsolete.
Also keep in mind that although the PS3 is going to make a somewhat lack-luster Linux desktop machine it is compatable with the 64bit PPC ISA and I expect within a year will be in more people's living rooms then all the computers that Apple has ever sold through their entire history of using PPC chips.
That's something to write home about, at least.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 18, 2006 11:14 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Oh and in fairly recent developments Sony has released kernel patches and enough information about the bootloader stuff so that any Distro that wishes to provide a version that will install on the PS3.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 18, 2006 14:17 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Also keep in mind that in modern IBM terms: POWER == PowerPC May be. But the Ubuntu PPC does not support all this zoo. For the Ubuntu "PPC Platform" == "Apple G3, G4 or G5". Also keep in mind that although the PS3 is going to make a somewhat lack-luster Linux desktop machine it is compatable with the 64bit PPC ISA and I expect within a year will be in more people's living rooms then all the computers that Apple has ever sold through their entire history of using PPC chips. That's something to write home about, at least. PS3 is great - but a "normal desktop" it's not. Not what you'd expect from modern desktop anyway. Just 256MiB of RAM, for example. May be it'll be good idea to create specialized version of Ubuntu for a PS3 (there are already version for XBox), but it'll be totally different beast that what is used on modern PC or Apple G4...
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 19, 2006 4:45 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > the Ubuntu PPC does not support all this zoo. For the Ubuntu "PPC Platform" == "Apple G3, G4 or G5". Are you sure about that? Debian for PowerPC supports several non-Apple PowerPC systems, so why wouldn't Ubuntu run on those systems also?
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 19, 2006 8:42 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] "PS3 is great - but a "normal desktop" it's not. Not what you'd expect from modern desktop anyway. Just 256MiB of RAM, for example."
Ya you can agrue that, but your wrong. I still use a number of computers with 256megs and it's certainly possible to have a decent desktop that can do video, games, browsing, IM, email, word proccessing, and any number of other functionality.
All the PS3 is is a 64bit PowerPC computer with a DVD drive, 256megs of RAM, four or so USB ports, 40gigs or more disk space, wired ethernet and optional wireless.
That's it. If Ubuntu can't make that be something usefull then they have some serious problems. At least that is why we have lots of other Linux distributions, I guess.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and Posted Nov 19, 2006 17:05 UTC (Sun) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link] On the Ubuntu's download page, it says "Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5)" and "For Apple Macintosh G3, G4, and G5 computers, including iBooks and PowerBooks as well as IBM OpenPower machines."
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and community (Linux.com) Posted Nov 20, 2006 10:20 UTC (Mon) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link] I can understand if they do not want to support something which does notgenerate revenue for them - after all, they have to survive commercially. Perhaps as a compromise, they should provide the infrastructure for a community-supported version of Ubuntu-PowerPC. Kubuntu was initially successful as a community project, and Ubuntu-PowerPC could make some use of Debian packages, so they wouldn't have to do everything themselves.
Ubuntu Developer Summit report: Desktop plans, PowerPC's future, and community (Linux.com) Posted Nov 20, 2006 16:41 UTC (Mon) by crimsun (subscriber, #13750) [Link] [Disclaimer: I'm involved with Ubuntu development as a volunteer.]
It would be wonderful, if "Ubuntu PPC support" is in fact deprecated[0],
[0] demoted to best-effort community support, the strategy for
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