Firefox 52esr on PPC32 is outdated

[Leo Historias]

They should update firefox to the latest one considering it is outdated and
52esr is out of support. 115ESR or 128esr is more updated than 52esr.

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Leo,

Post by Leo Historias
They should update firefox to the latest one considering it is outdated
and 52esr is out of support. 115ESR or 128esr is more updated than 52esr.

getting a current version of Firefox to work on 32-bit PowerPC is anything
but trivial and we don't have the man power to work on that at the moment,
unfortunately.

Adrian

[Leo Historias]

Ok, thanks for the update.

Still, we already have rust in the PPC32 repositories so why not compile
Firefox with that Rust? Ironically, even i386 has Firefox 115ESR and it
doesn't require sse2 at all unlike the official Firefox download page at
Mozilla.

Em dom., 15 de set. de 2024 12:32, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
Hello Leo,

Post by Leo Historias
They should update firefox to the latest one considering it is outdated
and 52esr is out of support. 115ESR or 128esr is more updated than 52esr.

getting a current version of Firefox to work on 32-bit PowerPC is anything
but trivial and we don't have the man power to work on that at the moment,
unfortunately.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Leo,

Post by Leo Historias
Still, we already have rust in the PPC32 repositories so why not compile
Firefox with that Rust? Ironically, even i386 has Firefox 115ESR and it
doesn't require sse2 at all unlike the official Firefox download page at
Mozilla. 

Rust isn't the only requirement for Firefox these days, but we also need
NodeJS which is currently not available on 32-bit PowerPC.

While it is possible to cross-transpile the JavaScript files for PowerPC
from x86_64, no one has implemented that yet for Debian, so we currently
cannot build Firefox on 32-bit PowerPC.

Adrian

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Thanks for your explanation,but  why Node.JS?

Because Firefox upstream decided they want to transpile Javascript files during
the build process instead of the development process.

Why don't we have it on ppc32?

Because it's not been fully ported to 32-bit PowerPC. I started working on it and
some others did, but it was never finished. As I said before, all these things
require a lot of human resources, i.e manpower.

One alternative is to build either Firefox using nodejsc

I have no idea what NodeJSC is. As I said, one could cross-transpile the JavaScript
files for 32-bit PowerPC and other architectures without NodeJS support.

But someone has to do the actual work and I cannot clone myself.

or use a version of Firefox that requires rust but not Node.JS

We're using the Firefox version that is part of Debian. Maintaining a custom version
is extremely time-consuming.


Adrian

[Leo Historias]

What? You didn't finish due to lack of "manpower"? And we need cross
transpile? Okay, i could do it for you if only i had the skills necessary
and I'm not too young (but being too young isn't neccesary for the reason
not to do it,right? I'm 17,almost turning 18 next year!)

Any alternatives in case firefox 52esr doesn't get updated to 115esr?
Especially for tls 1.3 support,since some websites require it. 52esr's tls
1.3 support is only disabled by default,as far as i know.

Em dom., 15 de set. de 2024 13:09, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz

Post by Leo Historias
Thanks for your explanation,but why Node.JS?

Because Firefox upstream decided they want to transpile Javascript files during
the build process instead of the development process.

Post by Leo Historias
Why don't we have it on ppc32?

Because it's not been fully ported to 32-bit PowerPC. I started working on it and
some others did, but it was never finished. As I said before, all these things
require a lot of human resources, i.e manpower.

Post by Leo Historias
One alternative is to build either Firefox using nodejsc

I have no idea what NodeJSC is. As I said, one could cross-transpile the JavaScript
files for 32-bit PowerPC and other architectures without NodeJS support.
But someone has to do the actual work and I cannot clone myself.

Post by Leo Historias
or use a version of Firefox that requires rust but not Node.JS

We're using the Firefox version that is part of Debian. Maintaining a custom version
is extremely time-consuming.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Post by Leo Historias
What? You didn't finish due to lack of "manpower"? And we need cross
transpile? Okay, i could do it for you if only i had the skills
necessary and I'm not too young (but being too young isn't neccesary
for the reason not to do it,right? I'm 17,almost turning 18 next year!)

Manpower... few people hack on PowerPC, upstream doesn't care much about
it and BigEndian in general either. Adrian is doing an immense job already.

If you like to hack, welcome.. there are no age restrictions! Just the
average PPC computer is older than you...

Riccardo

[Leo Historias]

Any news on this?

Em qui., 31 de out. de 2024 15:00, Leo Historias <

I mean to John. so....
On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 4:20 AM Riccardo Mottola <

The port of Firefox 115esr to PPC32,specifically Node.JS

I'm not working on that, sorry. I work on ArcticFox and got it running
on PPC again, btw.
-R

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

I don't know which kind of news you expect? did you do anything?

On my side, ArcticFox, I was able to find out by bisecting (that means
about one week of compilation attempts on my PowerBook).
Built-in ICU broke and build needs to use system ICU. I have now working
build again... so a decently usable browser for basic needs.

Current Firefox has a build fix which I am not able to import yet too
divergent code base, maybe in the future.

On debian there are no issues, I made a binary available.

I did no work on Firefox, last time it didn't work. Generally on a PPC32
system I expect it to be barely usable, even if it had no bugs. On
equivalent Intel systems (e.g. a PIII) it is quite slow nowadays, albeit
usable for basic needs.

Trade-off between more usability and more compatibility.

Riccardo

Post by Leo Historias
Any news on this?
Em qui., 31 de out. de 2024 15:00, Leo Historias
I mean to John. so....
On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 4:20 AM Riccardo Mottola

The port of Firefox 115esr to PPC32,specifically Node.JS

I'm not working on that, sorry. I work on ArcticFox and got it running
on PPC again, btw.
-R

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Ricardo,

Post by Riccardo Mottola
I don't know which kind of news you expect? did you do anything?

Agreed.

Post by Riccardo Mottola
On my side, ArcticFox, I was able to find out by bisecting (that means
about one week of compilation attempts on my PowerBook).
Built-in ICU broke and build needs to use system ICU. I have now working
build again... so a decently usable browser for basic needs.

FWIW, you can get access to to a PowerPC machine running big-endian Linux
either though OpenPOWER at OSUOSL or the GCC Compile Farm. You don't have
to do the bisecting on your old PowerBook ;-).

Post by Riccardo Mottola
Current Firefox has a build fix which I am not able to import yet too
divergent code base, maybe in the future.
On debian there are no issues, I made a binary available.
I did no work on Firefox, last time it didn't work. Generally on a PPC32
system I expect it to be barely usable, even if it had no bugs. On
equivalent Intel systems (e.g. a PIII) it is quite slow nowadays, albeit
usable for basic needs.
Trade-off between more usability and more compatibility.

For current Firefox on 32-bit PowerPC, we would need to come up with a way
to cross-transpile the embedded Javascript code in Firefox from x86_64.

Adrian

[Leo Historias]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Leo Historias <***@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 28, 2024 at 2:52 PM
Subject: Re: Firefox 52esr on PPC32 is outdated
To: John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <***@physik.fu-berlin.de>


Any news yet?

On Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 8:13 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
Hi Ricardo,

Post by Riccardo Mottola
I don't know which kind of news you expect? did you do anything?

Agreed.

Post by Riccardo Mottola
On my side, ArcticFox, I was able to find out by bisecting (that means
about one week of compilation attempts on my PowerBook).
Built-in ICU broke and build needs to use system ICU. I have now working
build again... so a decently usable browser for basic needs.

FWIW, you can get access to to a PowerPC machine running big-endian Linux
either though OpenPOWER at OSUOSL or the GCC Compile Farm. You don't have
to do the bisecting on your old PowerBook ;-).

Post by Riccardo Mottola
Current Firefox has a build fix which I am not able to import yet too
divergent code base, maybe in the future.
On debian there are no issues, I made a binary available.
I did no work on Firefox, last time it didn't work. Generally on a PPC32
system I expect it to be barely usable, even if it had no bugs. On
equivalent Intel systems (e.g. a PIII) it is quite slow nowadays, albeit
usable for basic needs.
Trade-off between more usability and more compatibility.

For current Firefox on 32-bit PowerPC, we would need to come up with a way
to cross-transpile the embedded Javascript code in Firefox from x86_64.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Post by Leo Historias
Any news yet?

Not quite sure what you would like to hear?

As I already explain, getting a current version of Firefox to both build and
work on 32-bit PowerPC is anything but trivial and while it's generally possible,
it's very low on my priority list.

Adrian

[Leo Historias]

Thanks for the update.

Still,I wanna hear if there's any progress on Firefox PPC32
port,specifically the Node.js port for 32 bit PowerPC.That dependency of
Firefox has been ported to i386/32 bits,and this made Firefox work.
However,that's not currently ported to PPC32,right?

[Leo Historias]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
De: Leo Historias <***@gmail.com>
Date: qui., 28 de nov. de 2024 16:21
Subject: Re: Firefox 52esr on PPC32 is outdated
To: John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <***@physik.fu-berlin.de>
Cc: debian-powerpc <debian-***@lists.debian.org>


Thanks for the update.

Still,I wanna hear if there's any progress on Firefox PPC32
port,specifically the Node.js port for 32 bit PowerPC.That dependency of
Firefox has been ported to i386/32 bits,and this made Firefox work.
However,that's not currently ported to PPC32,right?

[Linux User #330250]

Hey, Leo, what is your problem?

Post by Leo Historias
---------- Forwarded message ---------
Date: qui., 28 de nov. de 2024 16:21
Subject: Re: Firefox 52esr on PPC32 is outdated
Thanks for the update.
Still,I wanna hear if there's any progress on Firefox PPC32
port,specifically the Node.js port for 32 bit PowerPC.That dependency of
Firefox has been ported to i386/32 bits,and this made Firefox work.
However,that's not currently ported to PPC32,right?
Ah, I see. So you guys won't port the dependencies right now due to
manpower. And you explained it well. So that's why you guys won't bring
Firefox 115esr to powerpc yet until you bring node.js,which became a
requirement 1 year ago.
And thanks for clarifying I'm not too young,i will contribute later.

Is it your desire to add your e-mail address to a spam filter? Because
you're right on target for that to happen...

@Adrian and all the others still working on PPC32 and PPC64: BIG BIG
thanks! Your work is very hard for a very few still using this
architecture, so thank you so much!

I myself have stopped running my PowerMacs due to time constraints, but
they're waiting for me, probably for my retirement. The problem is that
by then most likely no current Linux will exist anymore.

I just read that CHRP will be removed from the Linux kernel with one of
the next releases. The next release is 6.13, so maybe this one?

https://lwn.net/Articles/998180/

"No Apple machines should be affected." Great, and hopefully so,
although I remember that some CHRP stuff was loaded by the Linux kernel
on my PowerMac back in the day.

About Firefox I can only say that I feel the same thing as you describe,
Adrian, when you say that the current version isn't really usable on a
single-core system such as a G4. Even on a Dual-G4 or a Dual-G5,
TenFourFox for Mac OS X was very VERY slow... The latest versions of
Firefox are way too bloated for such hardware, so maybe we need to
realize that keeping a completely current userland on PPC32/64-based
Linux is no longer possible. A lot of projects have moved on and even
when the code compiles, it clearly isn't meant to run on such old
machines. This does include some older Pentiums and Core Duos I also
still lave laying around in my basement.

Which brings me to my final question: what could be viable replacement
applications for using an old 32-bit machine on the Internet?
What's a lightweight alternative for:
1) Gnome or KDE
2) Thunderbird
3) Firefox
4) LibreOffice
5) GIMP
and so on... Because almost all of those projects are "no fun" on two
decade old systems and older.

And: maybe a specific version of Debian Linux is necessary for "legacy
systems" rather than trying to keep it all current for everybody. Maybe
a PPC64 system needs other software than a PPC32 system. And as well for
i386 and so on.

Just my 2¢.
And THANK YOU Adrian and all others, who still work on and contribute to
PPC32 and PPC64!

Apologies for this long posting,
and representing Leo without his knowledge and consent, for Leo and what
he wrote, because this clearly isn't the right way to talk to hard
working developers and maintainers. I hope you accept it from me instead.

Linux User #330250

[Leo Historias]

No,it's not that...

Em sex., 29 de nov. de 2024 13:18, Linux User #330250 <

Post by Linux User #330250
Hey, Leo, what is your problem?

Post by Leo Historias
---------- Forwarded message ---------
Date: qui., 28 de nov. de 2024 16:21
Subject: Re: Firefox 52esr on PPC32 is outdated
Thanks for the update.
Still,I wanna hear if there's any progress on Firefox PPC32
port,specifically the Node.js port for 32 bit PowerPC.That dependency of
Firefox has been ported to i386/32 bits,and this made Firefox work.
However,that's not currently ported to PPC32,right?
Ah, I see. So you guys won't port the dependencies right now due to
manpower. And you explained it well. So that's why you guys won't bring
Firefox 115esr to powerpc yet until you bring node.js,which became a
requirement 1 year ago.
And thanks for clarifying I'm not too young,i will contribute later.

Is it your desire to add your e-mail address to a spam filter? Because
you're right on target for that to happen...
@Adrian and all the others still working on PPC32 and PPC64: BIG BIG
thanks! Your work is very hard for a very few still using this
architecture, so thank you so much!
I myself have stopped running my PowerMacs due to time constraints, but
they're waiting for me, probably for my retirement. The problem is that
by then most likely no current Linux will exist anymore.
I just read that CHRP will be removed from the Linux kernel with one of
the next releases. The next release is 6.13, so maybe this one?
https://lwn.net/Articles/998180/
"No Apple machines should be affected." Great, and hopefully so,
although I remember that some CHRP stuff was loaded by the Linux kernel
on my PowerMac back in the day.
About Firefox I can only say that I feel the same thing as you describe,
Adrian, when you say that the current version isn't really usable on a
single-core system such as a G4. Even on a Dual-G4 or a Dual-G5,
TenFourFox for Mac OS X was very VERY slow... The latest versions of
Firefox are way too bloated for such hardware, so maybe we need to
realize that keeping a completely current userland on PPC32/64-based
Linux is no longer possible. A lot of projects have moved on and even
when the code compiles, it clearly isn't meant to run on such old
machines. This does include some older Pentiums and Core Duos I also
still lave laying around in my basement.
Which brings me to my final question: what could be viable replacement
applications for using an old 32-bit machine on the Internet?
1) Gnome or KDE
2) Thunderbird
3) Firefox
4) LibreOffice
5) GIMP
and so on... Because almost all of those projects are "no fun" on two
decade old systems and older.
And: maybe a specific version of Debian Linux is necessary for "legacy
systems" rather than trying to keep it all current for everybody. Maybe
a PPC64 system needs other software than a PPC32 system. And as well for
i386 and so on.
Just my 2¢.
And THANK YOU Adrian and all others, who still work on and contribute to
PPC32 and PPC64!
Apologies for this long posting,
and representing Leo without his knowledge and consent, for Leo and what
he wrote, because this clearly isn't the right way to talk to hard
working developers and maintainers. I hope you accept it from me instead.
Linux User #330250

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi #330250 _:)

Post by Linux User #330250
About Firefox I can only say that I feel the same thing as you describe,
Adrian, when you say that the current version isn't really usable on a
single-core system such as a G4. Even on a Dual-G4 or a Dual-G5,
TenFourFox for Mac OS X was very VERY slow... The latest versions of
Firefox are way too bloated for such hardware, so maybe we need to
realize that keeping a completely current userland on PPC32/64-based
Linux is no longer possible. A lot of projects have moved on and even
when the code compiles, it clearly isn't meant to run on such old
machines. This does include some older Pentiums and Core Duos I also
still lave laying around in my basement.

TenFourFox was is somehwat usable actually, of course not general
browsing anymore, but specific friendly sites...
Lightweight of course means removing features....

Post by Linux User #330250
1) Gnome or KDE

XFCE or Windowmaker + GNUstep

Post by Linux User #330250
2) Thunderbird

GNUMail

Post by Linux User #330250
3) Firefox

An issue... ArcticFox, netsurf, midori...

Post by Linux User #330250
4) LibreOffice

No real alternatives :(

Post by Linux User #330250
5) GIMP

GIMP luckily works on G4 and G5... otherwise you need several programs.
Image Magick, PRICE, xv, etc.


Riccardo

[Herr Montag]

Hi,

Post by Riccardo Mottola
TenFourFox was is somehwat usable actually, of course not general
browsing anymore, but specific friendly sites...

I actually try SeaLion [^1] on my PowerMacG511,2 (2 Ghz, 12 GB-Ram, 1 TB
NVMe-SSD) with Debian 12 SID and it is surprisingly usable for a lot of
websites I tried, inclusive GitHub etc.

Post by Riccardo Mottola
Riccardo

Jan

[^1]: https://github.com/wicknix/SeaLion/releases

[Leo Historias]

Speaking about it,The only reason why there's no firefox on PowerPC 32 bits
is because of the lack of node.js,this is the reason why Firefox works on
i386,even on non-sse2 processors unlike the official version.

For example in windows,The last version of Firefox on non-sse2 processors,
even on 7 is 48.0.2,which is too outdated to run some modern websites like
Discord which simply won't work or Youtube which works but warns you that's
unsupported. If you try to install something like 52esr or 102 using the
offline installer,it'll prevent you from installing. If you try to bypass
it by extracting it,it'll work after clicking on the EXE but it'll be
unstable and might crash. This won't be apparent from the get-go,the only
thing that causes the instability is by trying any heavy websites. Don't
expect stability on non-sse2 processors due to memory leaks and crashing.
Even the only sign before instability is the high ram usage. Wouldn't say
it won't work,especially on Windows 7 which officially supports 102. On
Vista and XP,this obviously won't work unless it's 52esr.

Em seg., 16 de dez. de 2024 18:21, Ken Cunningham <

Post by Riccardo Mottola

Post by Herr Montag
Hi,

Post by Riccardo Mottola
TenFourFox was is somehwat usable actually, of course not general

browsing anymore, but specific friendly sites...

Post by Herr Montag
I actually try SeaLion [^1] on my PowerMacG511,2 (2 Ghz, 12 GB-Ram, 1 TB

NVMe-SSD) with Debian 12 SID and it is surprisingly usable for a lot of
websites I tried, inclusive GitHub etc.

Post by Herr Montag

Post by Riccardo Mottola
Riccardo

Jan
[^1]: https://github.com/wicknix/SeaLion/releases
--
Herzlichst Jan Montag

I would agree that SeaLion has been the browser that seems the most
functional to me as well. I recommended this one a few months ago, the last
time this question came up about a browser for these systems.
People at that time were very enthusiastic about Firefox being able to
work, naturally enough, but until such time as it does work, which may or
may not be never, it's nice to have SeaLion available.
Ken

[Joe Nosay]

Build from source and edit the file to work on RISC based systems. Don't
expect others to solve that problem.

Post by Leo Historias
Speaking about it,The only reason why there's no firefox on PowerPC 32
bits is because of the lack of node.js,this is the reason why Firefox works
on i386,even on non-sse2 processors unlike the official version.
For example in windows,The last version of Firefox on non-sse2 processors,
even on 7 is 48.0.2,which is too outdated to run some modern websites like
Discord which simply won't work or Youtube which works but warns you that's
unsupported. If you try to install something like 52esr or 102 using the
offline installer,it'll prevent you from installing. If you try to bypass
it by extracting it,it'll work after clicking on the EXE but it'll be
unstable and might crash. This won't be apparent from the get-go,the only
thing that causes the instability is by trying any heavy websites. Don't
expect stability on non-sse2 processors due to memory leaks and crashing.
Even the only sign before instability is the high ram usage. Wouldn't say
it won't work,especially on Windows 7 which officially supports 102. On
Vista and XP,this obviously won't work unless it's 52esr.
Em seg., 16 de dez. de 2024 18:21, Ken Cunningham <

Post by Riccardo Mottola

Post by Herr Montag
Hi,

Post by Riccardo Mottola
TenFourFox was is somehwat usable actually, of course not general

browsing anymore, but specific friendly sites...

Post by Herr Montag
I actually try SeaLion [^1] on my PowerMacG511,2 (2 Ghz, 12 GB-Ram, 1

TB NVMe-SSD) with Debian 12 SID and it is surprisingly usable for a lot of
websites I tried, inclusive GitHub etc.

Post by Herr Montag

Post by Riccardo Mottola
Riccardo

Jan
[^1]: https://github.com/wicknix/SeaLion/releases
--
Herzlichst Jan Montag

I would agree that SeaLion has been the browser that seems the most
functional to me as well. I recommended this one a few months ago, the last
time this question came up about a browser for these systems.
People at that time were very enthusiastic about Firefox being able to
work, naturally enough, but until such time as it does work, which may or
may not be never, it's nice to have SeaLion available.
Ken

[Ed Robbins]

Post by Leo Historias
What? You didn't finish due to lack of "manpower"?

As far as I understand Adrian does almost all of the debian powerpc
maintenance (with some help here and there, not from me I'm afraid).
Without him there would be no ppc or ppc64 debian: As far as I'm aware it's
mostly a one man show (but apologies to anyone else whose efforts I have
missed in making that statement). He simply doesn't have time to maintain
thousands of packages and all the other work that goes into the OS AND port
a gargantuan browser and all its dependencies to powerpc as well, I think
is what he is communicating here. And nor can anyone reasonably expect him
to.

And we need cross transpile? Okay, i could do it for you if only i had the

Post by Leo Historias
skills necessary and I'm not too young (but being too young isn't neccesary
for the reason not to do it,right? I'm 17,almost turning 18 next year!)

Sounds like a great time to learn and get involved! There is no too young!

Ed

Any alternatives in case firefox 52esr doesn't get updated to 115esr?

Post by Leo Historias
Especially for tls 1.3 support,since some websites require it. 52esr's tls
1.3 support is only disabled by default,as far as i know.
Em dom., 15 de set. de 2024 13:09, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz

Post by Leo Historias
Thanks for your explanation,but why Node.JS?

Because Firefox upstream decided they want to transpile Javascript files during
the build process instead of the development process.

Post by Leo Historias
Why don't we have it on ppc32?

Because it's not been fully ported to 32-bit PowerPC. I started working on it and
some others did, but it was never finished. As I said before, all these things
require a lot of human resources, i.e manpower.

Post by Leo Historias
One alternative is to build either Firefox using nodejsc

I have no idea what NodeJSC is. As I said, one could cross-transpile the JavaScript
files for 32-bit PowerPC and other architectures without NodeJS support.
But someone has to do the actual work and I cannot clone myself.

Post by Leo Historias
or use a version of Firefox that requires rust but not Node.JS

We're using the Firefox version that is part of Debian. Maintaining a custom version
is extremely time-consuming.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

[Leo Historias]

Ah, I see. So you guys won't port the dependencies right now due to
manpower. And you explained it well. So that's why you guys won't bring
Firefox 115esr to powerpc yet until you bring node.js,which became a
requirement 1 year ago.


And thanks for clarifying I'm not too young,i will contribute later.

Post by Ed Robbins

Post by Leo Historias
What? You didn't finish due to lack of "manpower"?

As far as I understand Adrian does almost all of the debian powerpc
maintenance (with some help here and there, not from me I'm afraid).
Without him there would be no ppc or ppc64 debian: As far as I'm aware it's
mostly a one man show (but apologies to anyone else whose efforts I have
missed in making that statement). He simply doesn't have time to maintain
thousands of packages and all the other work that goes into the OS AND port
a gargantuan browser and all its dependencies to powerpc as well, I think
is what he is communicating here. And nor can anyone reasonably expect him
to.
And we need cross transpile? Okay, i could do it for you if only i had the

Post by Leo Historias
skills necessary and I'm not too young (but being too young isn't neccesary
for the reason not to do it,right? I'm 17,almost turning 18 next year!)

Sounds like a great time to learn and get involved! There is no too young!
Ed
Any alternatives in case firefox 52esr doesn't get updated to 115esr?

Post by Leo Historias
Especially for tls 1.3 support,since some websites require it. 52esr's tls
1.3 support is only disabled by default,as far as i know.
Em dom., 15 de set. de 2024 13:09, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz

Post by Leo Historias
Thanks for your explanation,but why Node.JS?

Because Firefox upstream decided they want to transpile Javascript files during
the build process instead of the development process.

Post by Leo Historias
Why don't we have it on ppc32?

Because it's not been fully ported to 32-bit PowerPC. I started working on it and
some others did, but it was never finished. As I said before, all these things
require a lot of human resources, i.e manpower.

Post by Leo Historias
One alternative is to build either Firefox using nodejsc

I have no idea what NodeJSC is. As I said, one could cross-transpile the JavaScript
files for 32-bit PowerPC and other architectures without NodeJS support.
But someone has to do the actual work and I cannot clone myself.

Post by Leo Historias
or use a version of Firefox that requires rust but not Node.JS

We're using the Firefox version that is part of Debian. Maintaining a custom version
is extremely time-consuming.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi,

Post by Leo Historias
What? You didn't finish due to lack of "manpower"?

As far as I understand Adrian does almost all of the debian powerpc maintenance
(with some help here and there, not from me I'm afraid).

Correct.

Without him there would be no ppc or ppc64 debian: As far as I'm aware it's mostly
a one man show (but apologies to anyone else whose efforts I have missed in making
that statement). He simply doesn't have time to maintain thousands of packages and
all the other work that goes into the OS AND port a gargantuan browser and all its
dependencies to powerpc as well, I think is what he is communicating here. And nor
can anyone reasonably expect him to.

Indeed, it's a huge amount of work and it's sometimes difficult not to lose one's sanity
doing that. It might not look like it, but there is a lot of work involved under the hood
to keep the ports going.

Be it fixing issues with libraries, the toolchain (gcc and binutils) or various other
packages. Plus, the buildds (automated build servers) plus porterboxes (machines that
Debian Developers can use to debug packages) need to be maintained as well.

FWIW, I have quickly compiled a TODO list for Debian Ports here:

- https://people.debian.org/~glaubitz/debian-ports-todo.txt

I will update it once new tasks and problems come to my mind.

Adrian

[Leo Historias]

Thanks for your explanation,but why Node.JS? Why don't we have it on ppc32?

One alternative is to build either Firefox using nodejsc or use a version
of Firefox that requires rust but not Node.JS

Em dom., 15 de set. de 2024 12:54, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <

Post by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
Hello Leo,

Post by Leo Historias
Still, we already have rust in the PPC32 repositories so why not compile
Firefox with that Rust? Ironically, even i386 has Firefox 115ESR and it
doesn't require sse2 at all unlike the official Firefox download page at
Mozilla.

Rust isn't the only requirement for Firefox these days, but we also need
NodeJS which is currently not available on 32-bit PowerPC.
While it is possible to cross-transpile the JavaScript files for PowerPC
from x86_64, no one has implemented that yet for Debian, so we currently
cannot build Firefox on 32-bit PowerPC.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Post by Leo Historias
They should update firefox to the latest one considering it is
outdated and 52esr is out of support. 115ESR or 128esr is more updated
than 52esr.

because Mozilla makes things unbuildable and unportable nowadays. Even
if you could get it to run it would be full of endianness bugs.
Also, if you compare to the 32bit version on Intel it is of limited use
on single-core processors comparable to a G4. Only on the rarer Core Duo
it is usable for daily browsing.
Sadly, most issues apply to ppc64 too, except more computing power.

For browsing on PPC or SPARC or similar one is better served with
various forks of Firefox and PaleMoon, like SeaLion, ArcticFox,
WhiteStar. They are not in the official debian repository

An intermediate compromise would be SeaMonkey which I was able to
compile myself up to its butlast release at least on FreeBSD/amd64 - it
doesn't have yet exotic dependencies beyond rust, but I didn't attempt
on Debian yet.

Still, since those forks derive from Mozilla, they suffer from the
questionable sources of upstream in the long run and suffer from the
limited manpower applied to the projects.
I do know, since I (try) to maintain ArcticFox.

Also, bad news for the latest version: it is for some unknown reason
broken on Debian PPC. It works on Debian Intel and PPC works on
NetBSD... I don't have other Linux PPC systems to test.
Given it takes 6-7 hours to compile, even bisecting is hard. Furthermore
it requires python 2.7, and this excludes my second bild system which
could help. My attempts to generate a new python 2.7 failed and I gave up.
So... for now, no PPC.

https://github.com/rmottola/Arctic-Fox/issues/210


Riccardo

[David VANTYGHEM]

There's https://basilisk-browser.org/download.shtml too.

Post by Riccardo Mottola
Hi,

Post by Leo Historias
They should update firefox to the latest one considering it is
outdated and 52esr is out of support. 115ESR or 128esr is more
updated than 52esr.

because Mozilla makes things unbuildable and unportable nowadays. Even
if you could get it to run it would be full of endianness bugs.
Also, if you compare to the 32bit version on Intel it is of limited
use on single-core processors comparable to a G4. Only on the rarer
Core Duo it is usable for daily browsing.
Sadly, most issues apply to ppc64 too, except more computing power.
For browsing on PPC or SPARC or similar one is better served with
various forks of Firefox and PaleMoon, like SeaLion, ArcticFox,
WhiteStar. They are not in the official debian repository
An intermediate compromise would be SeaMonkey which I was able to
compile myself up to its butlast release at least on FreeBSD/amd64 -
it doesn't have yet exotic dependencies beyond rust, but I didn't
attempt on Debian yet.
Still, since those forks derive from Mozilla, they suffer from the
questionable sources of upstream in the long run and suffer from the
limited manpower applied to the projects.
I do know, since I (try) to maintain ArcticFox.
Also, bad news for the latest version: it is for some unknown reason
broken on Debian PPC. It works on Debian Intel and PPC works on
NetBSD... I don't have other Linux PPC systems to test.
Given it takes 6-7 hours to compile, even bisecting is hard.
Furthermore it requires python 2.7, and this excludes my second bild
system which could help. My attempts to generate a new python 2.7
failed and I gave up.
So... for now, no PPC.
https://github.com/rmottola/Arctic-Fox/issues/210
Riccardo

--
Passez à Linux :https://infolib.re

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