greek/ports/powerpc/history.wml


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#use wml::debian::template title="PowerPC Port -- History" NOHEADER="yes"
#include "$(ENGLISHDIR)/ports/powerpc/menu.inc"
#use wml::debian::translation-check translation="70cf45edbaeb4b8fc8f99d683f2f5c5c4435be92" maintainer="galaxico"

<br>
<br>

<h1>Debian/PowerPC History</h1>

<p>
 The PowerPC port started in 1997 after the German <a
 href="http://www.linux-kongress.org/">Linux Kongress</a> in
 W&uuml;rzburg where the Debian project was sponsored a <a
 href="http://www.infodrom.north.de/Infodrom/tervola.html">PowerPC</a>
 for development issues.
</p>

<p>
 Fortunately working boot- and rootdisks were found at <a
 href="http://www.linuxppc.org/">LinuxPPC</a> and we could try to
 install something on the machine.  Unfortunately this required
 some programs that only run under Mac OS.  The only way to install
 them was to get another machine running Mac OS who has them already
 installed.  Since data exchange with other non-Mac OS machines were
 only able through msdos-formatted floppies this was a chicken-and-egg
 problem.
</p>

<p>
 Somehow we managed to hook another disk to the machine and
 installed Linux on it.  That was Apple's famous DR 1.  Suddenly we
 begun to port dpkg and friends to the new system.  Wow, that was
 possible.  It was impressive how the first packages were ported
 and built.  Unfortunately DR one didn't come with a dynamic linker
 and shared libraries.  Another problem was that the libraries and
 header files seemed to be somewhat outdated and we weren't able to
 compile a new libc out of the box.  However, the biggest and most
 serious problem were these suspicious crashes that also screwed
 the file systems entirely.  Fixable only by re-installations. 
</p>

<p>
 Klee Dienes, another Debian Developer, worked on this problem and
 suddenly came up with a <a
 href="ftp://ftp.infodrom.north.de/pub/Linux/linux-pmac/debian/mklinuxfs.tar.gz">mklinux tarball</a>
 of a more recent system - a haxored Debian GNU/Linux.  This
 tarball came with an old 1.99 version of libc.  From this time the
 machine run stable on the network and we could continue our
 effort.  We were compiling a lot of packages and noticed that some
 header files were not proper and that many programs were not
 compilable by the regular compiler.
</p>

<p>
 So Joel Klecker, a new Debian Developer at that time, started to
 work on egcs and it's compilation on the PowerPC machine.  After
 this was done the next step was to work on current libc versions.
 It turned out that our libc-1.99 version is incompatible to the next
 pre2.1 version that was needed in order to move the port into a
 stable state.
</p>

<p>
 At this stage Hartmut Koptein switched over from m68k to the powerpc
 port and started development for it. Development versions of
 Debian/PowerPC were available in 1998 and 1999.
</p> 

<p>
 The port was officially released for the first time with Debian GNU/Linux
 2.2 ("potato"), in August 2000.
</p>

<p>
 The development of the port continues. A build daemon has been set up
 on voltaire.debian.org,
 a PowerPC machine donated by Daniel Jacobowitz, also a Debian developer.
</p>