Last time I checked, radeon KMS was on by default. This is going to cause freezing/crashing problems for most radeon PowerPC users. Could we force pci mode using a config file?..
…and do we do this ourselves as part of a mate package, or try and get it part of the ati package for PowerPC, or maybe a casper script?
Need to get the boot message altered so that it offers more helpful advice (no video=ofonly).
Sound has issues still, need feedback from users in the hw-detect bug report on how to proceed. Importantly, users need to sort out any patches to the linux kernel and submit them themselves.
Plymouth fancy splash screen probably has endian issues…can we sort it, add a special mate PowerPC version with colurs adjusted, or just remove the package on powerpc so we get the text version?
Do we need pbbuttonsd still? Mate power manager seems to work alright just by itself. Probably need to sort out a patch for hw-detect to add pmu_battery module.
None of the above are show-stoppers, just would be nice to sort them, although I don’t have much time to devote to them. Anybody got any other thoughts?
I know this may be a little late in the game, but do you think that the Xorg bug we are seeing in 15.04 is a show stopper for having a PPC 15.04 release?
I really think the Xorg bug is a killer for PowerPC I hadn’t seen the earlier post from @smiffy, some interesting ideas there. I do want to support a PowerPC version but I need help to do it.
I can confirm that in 15.10 the ubuntu mate welcome crashes as expected (due to webkit).
Yaboot-installer (part of ubiquity) is also failing. This happened in 15.04 too although due to graphics problems it didn’t get reported much. I’ve had a look into this today and the official ubuntu mate powerpc isos are missing the yaboot package. This would certainly stop it working, so hopefully a bit of seed tinkering can fix that. Lubuntu installs fine and that has the yaboot package on the iso. Yaboot is part of the ‘boot’ seed, but it is beyond me why this doesn’t get sucked in by mate.
If the welcome screen gets fixed on PowerPC, then could it have a link to download the Broadcom wifi firmware, since some people seem to have immense problems with this simple act?
Okay, I think what is happening with yaboot comes from the live seed. I’ve ‘germinated’ a few, and lubuntu gets yaboot from a recommendation of ubiquity. Mate has “Feature:no-follow-recommends” so I guess yaboot needs to be explicitly added to the live seed?
Tonight I had a poke around the Ubuntu-Mate-Welcome code to see how I could implement the broadcom firmware installing. I then decided to see if I could add it to software-properties-gtk, which led me on to ubuntu-drivers-common. For any future 14.04 powerpc iso I can add this feature by creating a custom script in /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/detect/
@smiffy I learned that of you want bugs fixed in Ubuntu, then there are a few things you can do to help progress your bug.
Provide a debdiff fo the affected package.
Provide a link to a patch or buh with a patch in Debian.
Create a merged proposal for the affected package.
If you do either of the above then also subscribe ‘ubuntu-sponsors’ and this will automatically make the bug visible to the appropriate developers. However do not subscribe ‘ubuntu-sponsors’ without attaching or referencing a patch.
Thanks for the hint about Ubuntu sponsors. I do try and include a patch in most of my bug reports or provide some insightful knowledge about the problem!
I’ve analysed and added some more comments to the bug report. Apart from trying the latest software-properties-gtk, I think I’ve taken this as far as I can now. The version in Trusty is so poor, it needs a python whiz kid to look at it. No attention to detail!
Sadly somebody has butchered the Ubuntu Broadcom wiki page too!
I hadn’t seen the earlier post from 
