From PPCNUX: Our third Firefox build is now for version 3.5. As I still use Debian GNU/Linux every day on my PowerBook G4 there is of course a need for version 3.5. As you can expect the build runs very smooth except that I miss the sound of the new html5 video tag. Looks like Firefox is wired to a sound lib I don't use or something is misconfigured. But that's only a little black spot.

Read more at www.ppcnux.com...

The most recent Top 500 supercomputer list still features 2 or 3 PowerPC systems in the top 5, though the number Intel-based systems continue to grow. The #1 system, Road Runner, actually raises an interesting question about how to count "processor architecture," since it uses both AMD Opteron and IBM Cell processors. The other two PowerPC systems in the top 5 are both BlueGene installations, which use large numbers of embedded processors built around IBM's PowerPC 440 and 450 cores.

Read more at arstechnica.com...

Genesi has posted an update and a warning about Cherrypal, a rebranded Limepc, which uses Freescale's 5121e PowerPC processor. Due to the PowerPC connection, a few people got excited and were taken in by an apparently shady company, which has now folded. (Thanks to a reader for pointing out this story.)

Read more at bbrv.blogspot.com...

From PPCNUX: www.debian-desktop.org is offering a live CD image download based upon lenny with their KDE 4.2.3 packages.

Attention: The image is more than 800 MB!
At the moment the image is available for i386 and amd64. PowerPC will come soon.

Read more at www.ppcnux.com...

From PPCNUX: The actual stable KDE Version is available as backport for Lenny on www.debian-desktop.org.

Important changes compared to the original Debian packages:

Read more at www.ppcnux.com...

The linked blog post says it all. Nothing is final yet, but pretty soon PowerPC will probably become a "secondary architecture" in Fedora. Nobody's quite sure what that means, because there aren't any other secondary architectures. At the very least, some general Fedora people who currently (grudgingly) provide a little Fedora PPC quality assurance will stop doing so. For anybody currently using Fedora, this would be a good opportunity to get involved with Rawhide. Either that or start learning dpkg and apt-* commands.

Read more at velohacker.com...

Analyzing streaming data is an interesting application for a supercomputer, and apparently IBM just sold a prototype of its "System S" to TD Securities, a Canadian investment bank. But what actually caught our eye was this: it's based on Fedora 8 running on PowerPC 450 cores (BlueGene/P).

Of course, it's no secret that the Fedora community seems eager to de-support PowerPC as soon as they can. One can only wonder if future systems like this will be forced to use Debian...

Read more at www.theregister.co.uk...

MontaVista, a leading embedded Linux vendor, will demonstrate its "Fast Boot" technology on a Freescale 5121e processor at the upcoming "Embedded Masterclass" in the UK. They are promoting Fast Boot, which apparently touches everything from bootloader to init scripts, as a superior alternative to suspend/resume.

Read more at www.cambridgewireless.co.uk...

Version 2.06 of the Power Instruction Set Architecture (the current name for "PowerPC") has been published by Power.org. Among other things, this version includes an optional virtualization architecture for embedded ("Book E") PowerPC cores.

Read more at www.power.org...

From PPCNUX: IBM will add some racks to the jugene supercomputer in Jülich. 294.912 PowerPC cores will race to exceed 1 petaflop.

Read more at www.ppcnux.com...