Self Introduction: Al Dunsmuir
Greetings!
I've been a Fedora user since Fedora Core 3, but now I'm starting the
move to the next level - becoming a Fedora packager.
I'm interested in vintage hardware, especially older ATI/Radeon video,
and PPC (Macs & IBM).
I'm hoping to contribute to Fedora development in a couple of areas:
- Helping out in the PPC secondary architecture, including active
development as I get up to speed.
PPC64 started down the path to have grub2 as the bootloader in F18.
As of F20, for Mac G5s grub2 is the stage 1 bootloader, and yaboot
is still the stage 2 bootloader. The transition was incomplete, and
the F20 GA isos do not boot on Macs. An alternate iso (mod'd F20
alpha by Eric Larsson) and some manual fixups are required.
I've noted on irc that Paulo Flabiano Smorigo (pfsmorigo) is
currently working on more grub2 boot updates for F21.
Things get complicated:
- The yaboot package is currently orphaned in rawhide/F21.
- Both grub2 and yaboot only build 32-bit, even when booting ppc64.
- The ppc32 architecture builds are no more in Rawhide/F21.
The consensus is that a full ppc32 Fedora is not practical. To fill
that gap, I plan to create a ppc32 remix of F21 (core packages) once
I get up to speed - tentative name: PPChapeau (chapeau is French for
Hat). I plan to support G4 Macs and 32-bit CHRP IBM Power - I have 2
7046-B50s that dual-boot AIX (5.1).
The PS3 (ppc64) and all ppc32 currently depend on yaboot. With that
and a possible continuing Mac G5 stage 2 dependency, I'm going to
pick up ownership of yaboot as my first package. Jon Disnard (masta)
is going to sponsor me as a packager. He just happens to be a PS3
(Linux) owner, and I will be his first sponsorship - please be kind
to both of us!
Fedora dropped ppc32 installs in F18, and has not had live CD/DVDs
for either ppc architecture since F8. This makes doing development
(especially testing and debugging) of boot, and graphics issues much
more difficult.
I plan to work on getting the live installs running again for ppc64
for Rawhide and the F21 release (as a private download). I would
base it on the Mate spin, to accommodate the types of video that one
would encounter on vintage ppc machines such as Macs. I would use
that as a basis for my ppc32 remix.
I'm a C/C++/shell programmer of many years. Earlier in my career I
worked at IBM for 23 years (in hardware test, debuggers, and the
mainframe C/C++ compiler. At one point, I was _very_ familiar with
elf, dwarf and IEEE floating point (mainframe and AIX ppc).
I now work at RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) on a secure data transport
server on z/OS (C and assembler), and some AIX code. As a side work
project, I'm doing updated ports of some OSS packages (including
current rpm) to AIX. I'm also the InfoZIP Zip/Unzip port maintainer
for z/OS and z/VM - RBC has kindly granted me use of systems plus
relevant code I've developed for my main project (it's nice not to
work for a software vendor, from that point of view).
I but need to complete the Fedora Packager process. I'll be focusing
on getting up to speed on Fedora packaging and how the whole boot
process, kernel, X and Mesa work together plus other plumbing.
Learning Python is on my to-do list. I'd like to gain enough
knowledge to eventually contribute fixes and new code.
- Testing X11 & Mesa support for these graphics cards (and other
vintage type) on x686, X86_64, ppc64, and ppc32.
I've got a lot of different generations of ATI video cards... and
I'm not afraid to use them 8^).
I've also got a few Matrox MGA cards (x86 and ppc), but I am a wee
bit afraid of those - they will require developing a new KMS with at
least a wee bit of acceleration, now that the User Mode drivers are
no longer supported.
Thank you for your patience with this rather long note... and also my
thanks to all of the existing (and past) contributors to Fedora (and
Linux in general)!
Al