Project:PowerPC

The Gentoo/PowerPC Project works to ensure that Gentoo is the most up to date and robust PowerPC distribution available for both server and desktop applications.

Bugs are tracked and resolved from the Gentoo bug tracker. For PowerPC bugs, please see this link. Correspondence is maintained on the PowerPC related mailing lists, gentoo-ppc-user and gentoo-ppc-dev. For more information on PowerPC mailing lists, please see the Gentoo Mailing list overview. Additionally, the PowerPC team is almost always available in on Libera.Chat.

Key facts

 * PowerPC can be either big or little endian depending on kernel configuration!
 * We often say 'ppc' instead of 'ppc32' (just like with arm).
 * For big-endian, there is both ppc64be (also rarely known as ppc64be) and ppc.
 * For little-endian, we currently only support ppc64le (also known as ppc64el in debian). We do not support ppc32le right now although though that does exist.
 * Default/kernel page sizes (gentoo does not enforce one)
 * 64K (most binary distros use this, like Fedora, Debian and SuSe)
 * 4K (rarely used in distro kernels. Suitable for desktop usage)
 * ABIs (musl only supports ELFv2)
 * ppc64le: ELFv2 only
 * ppc64be: multiple choises
 * glibc/ELFv1 by default
 * musl/ELFv2 only
 * glibc/ELFv2 (optional not supported in gentoo currently )


 * Our current developer hardware can be found here: timberdoodle and bogsucker
 * timberdoodle is ppc64be and can run both ppc64be and ppc
 * bogsucker is ppc64le and can run ppc64le

Goals
The goal of the Gentoo PowerPC development project is to guarantee that the PowerPC packages built using Gentoo meta-data (ebuilds) are functional and up to date. By continuously testing new packages, maintaining existing packages and providing user support, the Gentoo PowerPC team provides the PowerPC user with a modern distro based on community, performance and freedom. Utilizing Gentoo's meta-data based distribution allows a user to to be as bleeding edge or as conservative as is desired.

Gentoo is unique because all of its supported architectures share the same generic meta-data information (ebuilds) which describe how to build packages. These packages are combined to form the foundation of this distribution. The PowerPC developers are responsible for building and testing ebuilds and marking them as tested (/) or stable (/). Our users can use this information, along with the Portage application, to build a system that suits their needs, whether it is a stable server, embedded system or a bleeding edge desktop system.

Participation
Can you make computers do amazing things? Are you excited about exploring areas of computing never explored before? We are continuously looking for volunteers willing to spend some of their free time on this project.

If you are interested in helping, but don't have a niche that you are interested in filling, you can always look through our bugs. There are always packages that need to be tested, bugs waiting to be found and fixed and enhancements waiting for someone to code them. Feel free to ask the PPC development team on IRC what you can help us with!

For more information on how the PPC team recruits please read our recruitment page.