Hardware support

This continuation currently targets only 32-bit big endian PowerPC (ppc) with glibc. The builds are generic (no AltiVec required, tuned for G4).

The live images boot on OpenFirmware systems, primarily NewWorld Apple machines (any G4, plus G3 "Blue and White" and newer). The 64-bit and little endian targets of the original project are not built at the moment.

C library support

The ppc target is built with glibc only. musl flavors are not provided at the moment.

The system uses the standard 32-bit PowerPC SysV ABI, and needs no special processor features: G3 and G4 class (32-bit Book3S) CPUs are supported.

Package support

The base system, the Xfce and IceWM desktops and the SeaLion web browser come first; the repository is extended step by step towards the coverage the original project had.

The package statistics page shows what is currently built, buildable or unavailable for each target, and is updated automatically.

September 16, 2022

Project status update for 2023

Last year I wrote about the plans for phasing out of big endian support in the project by the end of 2022. This is now being changed. Instead, I will cease maintenance of the project as a whole beginning January 2023.

That means if the project is to continue, somebody else will have to take over. They will need to provide their own build infrastructure as well as everything else, as the public repository hosting will be shutting down as well.

The main reason for dropping of the project is that I have been working on a new distro, Chimera Linux. The new project is fully supported on the POWER architecture (and others) and is currently in heavy development (but expected to stabilize during 2022). Users are encouraged to migrate to it once that happens.

I have been thinking about this a lot and came to the conclusion that there is no reason to keep up maintenance of both projects. Chimera is explicitly designed to address various shortcomings of Void while retaining most, if not all of Void’s good aspects. That means Chimera should make for a good successor of the project.

Additionally, big endian support may be coming back in Chimera, at very least for 64-bit POWER. The viability of 32-bit PowerPC support will be evaluated as well. However, this will only happen after the project has stabilized its tier 1 architectures (ppc64le, x86_64 and aarch64). We will be introducing RISC-V 64-bit support as well for those interested.

In the end, the only loss is support for the glibc C library, as Chimera is a musl-only distribution. However, since musl is first-class in the project, the overall level of polish should be a lot better than in Void, and for most users there should be no need for concern, especially on the POWER architecture where there are no proprietary NVIDIA drivers and other things that would be of concern. Containers, flatpak and other solutions should prove effective enough in addressing glibc application compatibility.

If you are interested, feel free to stop by in any of our main channels. There are links on the Chimera website. I will probably not update this page any more, but will keep it running for the foreseeable future (the repositories will shut down next year, however).

November 19, 2021

The future of big endian in Void-PPC

As the maintenance has been taking a significant toll on my free time and infrastructure, I can no longer maintain the repositories as they are. I do not actively use the big endian ports and community participation in the last few years has not been strong enough to offset that.

That is why starting next year, the musl repositories for big endian (i.e. the ppc64-musl and ppc-musl) will be dropped.

The glibc versions will be retained for the time being, with the tentative date for their phasing out being January 2023.

In the meantime, if there is interest, the ports will be looking for a new maintainer. The new maintainer will have to provide the package builds as well as fix issues that come up. I will still be here to coordinate upstreaming of patches if needed. Hosting the resulting packages on the official mirrors can likewise be coordinated depending on the circumstances.

In case no maintainer is found, the repositories will be shut down without a replacement.

The little endian (ppc64le and ppc64le-musl) ports are not affected by this in any way. The experimental ppcle and ppcle-musl packages will likewise stay as they are minimal effort.