This repo is now archived.

Please check Glasnost Linux if you want to run KISS Linux on other architectures.

KISS Linux for powerpc64le

This is a repository containing an unofficial port of KISS Linux for powerpc64le.

This was built with -mcpu=powerpc64le so should be compatible with at least power8 and power9 cpus, though this has only been tested on power9.

Note 2020-12-21 The repo has been restructured as here: https://k1ss.org/news/20200811a

Installing KISS on powerpc64le

Please refer to the main KISS webpage for general information about installing KISS. Once you have installed the tarball to your machine, see the "Using this repo" and "GRUB" sections for ppc-specific instructions.

TalosII/Blackbird users

You must boot your machine into another distro first and bootstrap KISS from there.

For TalosII/Blackbird users, you can load the Debian netboot image directly into petitboot by pressing "n" on the boot menu when you start your machine. From here you can install KISS by switching to another terminal (e.g. using Alt-F2), then using wget or curl to obtain the tarball and following the install instructions.

There is a powerpc64le version of the KISS root tarball available here which you can use to perform the initial install.

As on x86_64, it is recommended you rebuild the base packages with CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS appropriate for your system. On a TalosII, you could use:

export CFLAGS="-mcpu=power9 -mtune=power9 -O3 -pipe"
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS

Using this repo

Check out this repo once you're inside the KISS ppc64le installation/chroot.

This repo includes the main KISS repo and KISS community as submodules and are automatically kept up to date.

Set your KISS_PATH to something like this:

export KISS_PATH=/home/user/kiss-ppc64le/core:/home/user/kiss-ppc64le/overrides:/home/user/kiss-ppc64le/modules/repo/extra:/home/user/kiss-ppc64le/modules/repo/xorg:/home/user/kiss-ppc64le/modules/community/community

Kernel modules

Add a line to /etc/inittab, for example:

::once:/bin/modprobe evdev
::once:/bin/modprobe amdgpu

Xorg tested with amdgpu driver on a rx580.

GRUB

You don't need GRUB or any other additional bootloader to boot your KISS installation on the TalosII/Blackbird. Petitboot parses the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg directly to look for kernels. Therefore all you need is something appropriate in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file. You can use the below example, replacing the root partition with your own:

menuentry 'KISS Linux' {
        linux /boot/vmlinux root=/dev/sda1 ro
}

Package build failures

PRs and Issues are welcome if you find a package that doesn't build. I am not supporting Rust or Firefox currently.