[Libre-soc-dev] Firefox on PowerPC

[Jacob Lifshay]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 10:04 <whygee at f-cpu.org> wrote:

> When the time will come to get the first real silicon for a
> fully-functioning Libre-SoC,
> the question of the "killer app" will be asked. I guess Debian will be
> an answer but
> by itself it can't do everything. Some good folks are about to end their
> good work though.
>
> https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/10/14/2116255/powerpc-fork-of-firefox-reaches-end-of-the-road
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/tenfourfox-one-of-the-last-modern-browsers-for-powerpc-macs-is-officially-dead/



Afaict that covers 32-bit PowerPC; Libre-SOC will support powerpc64le,
which is officially supported by Ubuntu, which I assume means Firefox works
correctly there. Do note, however, that unless Firefox is recompiled
without VSX/VMX, the Linux kernel will be emulating those instructions, so
it may run quite slowly. (not all of the above is implemented yet in
Libre-SOC, but that's the current plan)

Jacob