Self Introduction: Al Dunsmuir

[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