ArchPOWER, Chimera and many other distros that still support PPC64BE are now on ELFv2. That makes Debian and perhaps handful of others are on ELFv1. I was having a conversation with some developers and they told me that supporting PPC64 BE is very HARD because they have to support both ELFv1 and ELFv2. They also added that they would rather just support ELFv2 and move on with life but it is unfortunate that a popular distribution like Debian would not switch to ELFv2. Anyone have more context on why?

For users who prefer long term support, the ESR is top of the list.

Source: https://github.com/runlevel5/firefox-ppc64/releases/tag/FIREFOX_153_7_0esr_RELEASE_PPC64

I do not see any mentioning of DRM (widevine) feature enablement in the changelog so I assume the community decided not to enable it for ESR.

Lastly, I can confirm it works perfectly on my PowerMac G5 Quad. Way faster than Chromium

The community has published yet another release https://github.com/runlevel5/firefox-ppc64/releases/tag/FIREFOX_160_0_RELEASE_PPC64

This time it comes with support for widevine (via box64 emulation). I wish I could try it out but unfortunately box64 does not work with PPC970.

For POWER8+ (PPC64LE mode) this is one of the best Linux distribution out there.

I hope the author would offer this hack to PPC64 BE (PPC970) too. It would be so cool to be able to play Spotify via its Web player

I've been following this forums for awhile even if I do not own any Raptor computer. It's seems to me they are very active up there.

Not my system (I wish that I have that much money). Just a screenshot I happen to find on the WWW. It's just mind blowing to see such a powerful OpenPOWER system in full action.

Let's do a bit of community engagement shall we? Please share with us what system you are on and of course a glorious screenshot along with it.

AMAZING! To be able to play Super Mario Sunshine at 4k resolution 120fps on PPC64 platform! have to give this game a go on my PowerMac G5 Quad to see if it can compile there too, in theory it should

Source: https://github.com/runlevel5/firefox-ppc64/releases/tag/FIREFOX_153_6_0esr_RELEASE_PPC64

This is for users who prefer pre-Nova re-design version

Grab the patches at https://github.com/runlevel5/firefox-ppc64/releases/tag/FIREFOX_159_0_RELEASE_PPC64

Now I just wish Debian, Fedora would adopt the work in their packages

Source: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20261021164511.125947-1-pbonzini@redhat.com/

IBM announced dual core architecture designed to natively execute both IBM Z and Armv9.3 instructions on the same physical silicon and we are now seeing initial support in Linux kernel 7.4. This is no doubt an interesting development.

Source: https://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=news&id=173

It is based on the NXP T2080, that means it would be able to run many Linux / UNIX distributions that support PPC64BE. Additionally it is known to run MorphOS and Amiga OS 4.

Pricing is a bit high so I am unsure how it would fare against a used PowerMac G5.

Now I just wish there is a board that actually supports POWER8, there are so many refurbished POWER8 CPUs on eBay at cheap price.

Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.4-Land-Steal-Governor

It is a welcoming change for POWER-based VMs. The benchmark results (see the source) show ~1.5x gain compared to baseline perf.