Recently DRI3 rendering infrastructure got availabe on big endian machines (klick). This will be part of the upcoming mesa-17.2 release. Hopefully using DRI3 will fix some of the graphics glitches we MorphOS-dual-booters are experiencing on the Linux side.

I gave it a try and built mesa-git on the Gentoo side of my G5. DRI3 got enabled and the desktop was actually usable! Unfortunately it took only a while to the first GPU-freeze. The r300-driver running my Radeon 9650 is known for not be too PPC-friendly. So I filed a bug on the Xorg-List. On the good side the X1000/X5000-Folks reported faster framerates for the already working cards.

It would be nice to have a reason to dig out my Quad core G5 again.
Would a driver that covers the 5000 series also work on a FirePro V4800 (based on the 5670)?

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Yes. Ye goode olde radeon driver, covering everything from r100 to r600 does the job (klick).

But of course you have to use a current kernel and build mesa from current git.

[ Editiert durch ernsteiswuerfel 14.05.2017 - 16:44 ]

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R600 only goes up to the Radeon 3870.
But that reference you point to does say its supported.
Cool.

Yet another reason to install Linux as opposed to a commercial OS.
Maybe I can wean myself away from Windows.
Thanks.

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This PPA usually has the most up to date graphics stack from git. Dunno if it's automatically compiled for PPC arch though or just x86 and amd64.

https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers

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Just checked. Interestingly even for Zesty which was discontinued on PPC, packages are still included and up tp date.

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I know what I'll be doing later this week then :)

Edit: there is also this ppa https://launchpad.net/~paulo-miguel-dias/+archive/ubuntu/mesa

[ Edited by Intuition 15.05.2017 - 00:29 ]

I finally managed it to get X running on my 2nd graphics card (standard Radeon with x86-BIOS). :)

In case someone is interested I wrote a rather comprehensive HOWTO on the Ubuntu Forums (klick)

I used a G5 11,2 with PCIe, which is not supported by MorphOS, but the procedure should be the same for the AGP Macs too. I wonder if it is possible to run the x86-card in the AGP-slot and some older PCI Mac-card in a PCI-slot to get a G5 7,3 up?

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Good question, our Radeon drivers under MorphOS will allow R500 X86 cards to be used, but I've been avoiding installing Ubuntu on my G5s right now because I don't have a card with a mac rom that will allow me to see the system boot up.
However, I'll have to get around to installing it at least on my PCIe G5, as I'm rather tired of running Ubuntu on 32 bit cpus (Firefox is a PITA, and Chrome is only available for 64 bit systems).

But all the new you have posted is welcome news, the HOWTO in particular.

Thanks.

> I'm rather tired of running Ubuntu on 32 bit cpus (Firefox is a PITA

What's better with Firefox on 64-bit PPC CPUs? As you know, a PPC64 CPU is faster in 32-bit mode than in 64-bit mode anyway. Or is it that Firefox' RAM requirement exceeds 4 GiB?

> and Chrome is only available for 64 bit systems).

Is it available for big-endian PPC64?

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No.

The browsers I run on Gentoo on my G5 are Netsurf 3.6, Otter 0.9.11 and Firefox 52.2. To my surprise Firefox started working again as of 52.2 (52.1 did not).

[ Editiert durch ernsteiswuerfel 17.06.2017 - 14:36 ]

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I am not suggesting that Firefox is better in 64 bit mode, I only mentioned that Chrome is only available in a 64 bit version (and as far as I know that is not limited a small endian cpus, but I could be wrong).

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Only Chromium I think. V8 was ported to PPC by IBM.

Nik does appear to be right, the 64 bit Linux port is for X64.

I'm not a big Chromium fan, but I'm going to have to look into it for PPC.
I've been spending more time exploring Ubuntu, Mate, Debian, etc.

They are a least reasonably up to date (as opposed to OSX).
And the recent advances in graphics are encouraging.

Addendum - Quote from What software is available for PowerPC? "Notable absentees are: Chrome/Chromium, Adobe Flash, Wine (however Qemu can be used, see below), Skype, ndiswrapper, proprietary video drivers and Dropbox."

[ Edited by Jim 17.06.2017 - 13:36 ]