[WBEL-devel] WBEL on PPC32?

[J. Alexander Jacocks]

Has anyone here given any thought to trying to get the AS version of
WBEL running on the IBM pSeries workstations? I might be willing to
undertake this, if not.

Thanks!
J. Alexander Jacocks

[Charles Stevenson]

Dear J. Alexander,

Post by J. Alexander Jacocks
Has anyone here given any thought to trying to get the AS version of
WBEL running on the IBM pSeries workstations? I might be willing to
undertake this, if not.

Not to my knowledge. A good base would be Yellow Dog Linux since it's
pretty much rpmbuild --rebuild of RH 9 on PowerPC. RedHat has no desire
to create a ppc distro due to their Intel contract ;-) If you need any
help let me know I've got a year of developing YDL under my belt and an
iBook at home running Debian.

Regards,
Charlie

[William Hooper]

Post by Charles Stevenson
Dear J. Alexander,

Post by J. Alexander Jacocks
Has anyone here given any thought to trying to get the AS version of
WBEL running on the IBM pSeries workstations? I might be willing to
undertake this, if not.

Not to my knowledge. A good base would be Yellow Dog Linux since it's
pretty much rpmbuild --rebuild of RH 9 on PowerPC. RedHat has no desire to
create a ppc distro due to their Intel contract ;-)

I think you need to take another look at the RHEL AS page.

http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/as/

# Supports the following architectures:

* Intel X86
* Intel Itanium2
* AMD AMD64 and Intel EM64T
* IBM zSeries
* IBM POWER Series
* IBM S/390

[Charles Stevenson]

Dear William,

Post by William Hooper
* IBM POWER Series

I stand corrected! ;-) I suppose a few things have changed since 2000.
My applogies.

Regards,
Charlie

[John Morris]

Post by Charles Stevenson

Post by J. Alexander Jacocks
Has anyone here given any thought to trying to get the AS version of
WBEL running on the IBM pSeries workstations? I might be willing to
undertake this, if not.

Not to my knowledge. A good base would be Yellow Dog Linux since it's
pretty much rpmbuild --rebuild of RH 9 on PowerPC. RedHat has no desire
to create a ppc distro due to their Intel contract ;-) If you need any
help let me know I've got a year of developing YDL under my belt and an
iBook at home running Debian.

Interesting. Must admit I don't follow the world of the rainbow fruit
like I probably should (Yea, yea, Apple is dying. But they have been
managing to do it at a profit for about twenty years now.) but it sounds
like fun. Just because RH doesn't see a profit/insert fav conspiracy
theory/etc doesn't mean there shouldn't be a port to Apple PPC hardware. I
know I'd laugh my darned fool head off if a couple of those big high
profile clusters of XServes ended up on a RHEL rebuild because RH didn't
bother with an official port. Ok, I'm easily amused.

So can anyone who knows the PPC universe fill in some details to satisfy
my curiosity? Does the PPC world handle 32/64 bit like x86_64 & Sparc
with a biarch install or does it have to be one or the other? Is the
PPC64 question worth asking in the Mac context? What are the practical
minimum requirements for a buildhost? Just how useful would a port really
be? After all, Yellow Dog isn't exactly a top tier distro and they have
had the PPC on Mac space mostly to themselves for a few years unless you
count Debian and *BSD. Can enough of the Mac Faithful be convinced to
load a non-Apple OS? (And lets us be blunt here. Debian is for the
faithful, not newbies and certainly not the average Machead.)

Other than i386 and x86_64, PPC is the only halfway interesting target
left. Sparc isn't all that interesting because affordable buildhosts
aren't available. (I don't know about anyone else, but I'd never consider
using my Sparc20 as a buildhost.) Alpha is for all intents and purposes a
dead platform. Don't have any big IBM iron and am not really interested
in going there anyway. Let RH have their support contract from anyone
leasing one of those monsters. Itanic isn't dead yet but will be soon
enough that don't see a point of scrounging eBay for one of those white
elephants.

[James Knowles]

Just how useful would a port really be?

I couldn't say what a definitive answer would be.

We have several very active LUGs (Linux user groups) in my state (Utah)
including some high-profile geeks.

Since Apple revamped the MacOS to be a pretty face on top of a Unix
core, I've seen a steadily increasing number of OS X machines around. In
every case they've been running various open software on top of modifed
OS X desktops. The modifications are generally tweaks to provide tools
and gimicks from the X world. Heck, even our company's had discussions
about bringing one or two on board to see how well they play with the
penguins.

My casual observation and impressions from talking with my fellow
LUGgers is that they're not in any hurry to jetison OS X for a PPC
distro since they have a shell and for the most part their Linux/*BSD
software runs fine.

They are cool toys, and now that they run Gimp and OpenOffice, have a
shell, and can run LAMP apps, I wouldn't mind playing with them. (I've
not really used Macs since the 68k days.)

Sparc ... affordable buildhosts aren't available.

I have a Sparc clone (U10) that I've only booted. Someday I'll get
around to toying with it more (ha ha). If there were demand for Sparc, I
might consider donating it.

I don't know how long Sparc will be around. They're a marginal niche
player now. According to my brother, a professional 3D whacker, the
graphics world has pretty much gone to x86 Linux clusters, with leftover
DEC Alpha Linux clusters.

Alpha is for all intents and purposes a dead platform.

Anybody want an old Multia? :-) Just kidding. It's sitting on top of my
Amiga. Neither are leaving any time soon despite the dust. I was given
an Apple IIc, but have no idea whether it works.

[J. Alexander Jacocks]

Post by Charles Stevenson
Not to my knowledge. A good base would be Yellow Dog Linux since it's
pretty much rpmbuild --rebuild of RH 9 on PowerPC. RedHat has no desire
to create a ppc distro due to their Intel contract ;-) If you need any
help let me know I've got a year of developing YDL under my belt and an
iBook at home running Debian.

Yeah, YDL is close, but they really don't have any great shakes support
for any PPC hardware != Macintosh. That's why I was hoping that the
support for pSeries in RHEL AS would make a good porting base,
especially since the group here has done such an impressive job with
i386 and x86/64.

Anyone know what the future of YDL is going to be? Fedora, I assume?

I might be able to get YDL mostly working (it doesn't support most of my
hardware) enough to start rebuilding WBEL, though.