Web browser options for PPC64?

socamx · n00b Joined: 30 Jan 2021 Posts: 1

It doesn't seem possible to emerge any modern web browser on ppc64. I have an original dual 2 ghz Power Mac G5 running xfce4 and every single web browser I try to install that is remotely modern is either a precompiled, x86 only binary, or itself and most of its dependencies are masked off.

I was hoping to get Firefox or Epiphany going but neither seem to be possible.

The only one I have gotten installed and going is Dillo, and it's a relic of the early 2000s that barely supports CSS, let alone any even remotely modern standards.

Is PPC64 just out of luck for modern browsers?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:37 pm Post subject:

socamx,

Welcome to Gentoo.

PPC64 is no well tested. Feel free to keyword things you would like to try.
Firefox will be a challenge. It needs rust and llvm.

Rust is known to build on powerpc64-unknown-linux-gnu. That's you.
llvm builds too. There is a .deb of llvm-10.

That does not mean that they will just work for you.

To see what needs to be built to get firefox, cheat.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 9320

www-client/falkon has ppc64 keyword.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2021 11:37 pm Post subject:

Aww asturm,

We might have got someone keywording ppc64 :)
_________________
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Juippisi · Developer Joined: 30 Sep 2005 Posts: 757 Location: /home

Firefox does have ~ppc64 KEYWORDS, but were you after firefox-bin? If you choose firefox, you get some relief by installing rust-bin.

schwarzygesetzlos · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2021 12:19 pm Post subject:

www-client/falkon has ~ppc64 keyword but dev-qt/qtwebengine on which it is based has no ~ppc64 keyword. Also qtwebengine won't run (unpatched) on Big Endian machines like a G5.
www-client/firefox builds and works fine on my Talos II (POWER 9 cpu) but does not build on my G5 (POWER 4 based 970MP cpu). Maybe rust and/or Firefox implicitly use newer cpu instructions?

The only 2 non-text-based browsers which work on my G5 so far are www-client/epiphany and www-client/netsurf. If net-libs/webkit-gtk (which Epiphany uses) crashes on some sites you could try building it with patches included in the ~ppc keywording request. Would be interesting to know whether they improve the situation on ppc64 too.
_________________
Talos II. [Gentoo Linux] | PMac G5 11,2. PMac G4 3,6. PBook G4 5,8. [MorphOS 3.18 / Gentoo Linux] | Vampire V4 SA [ApolloOS / Amiga OS 3.2.2]

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22890

On i686, Rust definitely does use newer instructions than technically exist on i686. (Specifically, basic i686 does not have SSE2, but default x86 Rust builds do try to use SSE2 despite claiming a CHOST of i686.) I am not familiar with Rust on PPC64, but I would not be surprised if it also assumed a higher baseline than gcc assumes for a target of ppc64.

schwarzygesetzlos · Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:05 am Post subject:

Firefox working now again on a G5! The key to success is to use a recent dev-libs/nss (3.64 or greater).

nss-3.64 mentions some ppc fixes:
Bug 1687164 - Introduce NSS_DISABLE_CRYPTO_VSX and disable_crypto_vsx.
Bug 1698320 - replace __builtin_cpu_supports("vsx") with ppc_crypto_support() for clang.
Bug 1613235 - Add POWER ChaCha20 stream cipher vector acceleration.

I used dev-libs/nss-3.65-r1 in combination with Firefox 78.10.1 on ppc64-musl and with Firefox 89.0 on ppc64-glibc. Both run fine without crashes, even youtube-playback works! Though you get 'funky' colours.

_________________
Talos II. [Gentoo Linux] | PMac G5 11,2. PMac G4 3,6. PBook G4 5,8. [MorphOS 3.18 / Gentoo Linux] | Vampire V4 SA [ApolloOS / Amiga OS 3.2.2]