XBMC for Linux port to PowerPC (PPC) CPU-architecture?

Well guys, i have a couple macs that i dont use anymore one being a macmini 1.5ghz that i modded with 1gb of ram.

I would love to run XBMC with it, im currently running it with my macbook, but theres no port for PPC and probably wont be in a while or never, can i install linux on my macmini and run XBMC even if its PPC?

Thanks in advance..

No.

it is not impossible to port XBMC to PPC, it is 'just' that you need to find a skilled C++ programmer willing to volunteer (and I do not think any existing developers on Team-XBMC are personaly interested in doing this themselves, nor do I think anyone of them own a computer with a PPC CPU).

We even suggested the idea as a Google Summer of Code project for XBMC:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Google_Summe...discussion

Quote:* Fully port XBMC for Linux to compile and run on PowerPC (PPC) architecture
** Maybe with the help of The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure?

Gamester17 Wrote:it is not impossible to port XBMC to PPC, it is 'just' that you need to find a skilled C++ programmer willing to volunteer (and I do not think any existing developers on Team-XBMC are personaly interested in doing this themselves, nor do I think anyone of them own a computer with a PPC CPU).

We even suggested the idea as a Google Summer of Code project for XBMC:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Google_Summe...discussion

Well ive been following and like you say, ppc is the beginning of xbox360 or ps3 development because they share the architecture, but i also understand the developers that are not interested as Intel PCs are really cheap and if you really want a good media center with XBMC like its probably easier to build a setup just to run it, dont you think?

If you already paid for a big ass TV and a hometheatre, would be stupid not to put another 300 or 400 dlls to build a badass media center. Just my opinion..

I am also interesting in a linux ppc version, just to make something of my old macmini.
I just installed debian on my mac mini, and tried to compile xbmc, the result is not so bad, the gui part of xbmc does not use assembly instructions, so there is not any problem, but the audio/video decoders along with the dll loader are using asm, so there will be much work :/

cedric Wrote:I just installed debian on my mac mini

Would it not be better to use Ubuntu for consistancy?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCDownloads

cedric Wrote:...but the audio/video decoders along with the dll loader are using asm, so there will be much work :/

Well, since most our video and audio codecs (at least for XBMC's DVDPlayer video-player) are based on FFmpeg (it is just not included in our forked version that is in our own SVN), and the original FFmpeg (see www.ffmpeg.org) does already support PPC (and most other processor architectures out there as well) that part might not be as complicated as say the other third-party libraries that XBMC also use which has not yet been ported to PPC by the original developers of that library, upstream.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Development_Notes
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=PAPlayer


Feel free to start a new topic-thread in development forum if you are serious about porting XBMC to PowerPC (PPC) architecture yourself.

I am sure that you will be able to get help from our developers and other new developers might join in as well, it is just that no one want to take the lead in such a port project, (just as no one on Team-XBMC wanted to take lead in porting XBMC to Mac OS X before Elan stepped up, and no one wanted to take lead in the porting XBMC to Windows before WiSo stepped up, ...and now they are members of Team-XBMC and both those port projects are progressing very well, with more people assisting in the coding althought those still are leading the port process for those platforms.

Curious - how limiting is the processing power of the PPC chips commonly found in the target platforms discussed here? Video?

Gamester17 Wrote:Would it not be better to use Ubuntu for consistancy?
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCDownloads

You are right, in fact I was not aware of a ppc version of Ubuntu.
Anyway, Debian is working fine for me, and all the needed packages are also present on Debian.

Quote:Well, since most our video and audio codecs (at least for XBMC's DVDPlayer video-player) are based on FFmpeg (it is just not included in our forked version that is in our own SVN), and the original FFmpeg (see www.ffmpeg.org) does already support PPC (and most other processor architectures out there as well) that part might not be as complicated as say the other third-party libraries that XBMC also use which has not yet been ported to PPC by the original developers of that library, upstream.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Development_Notes
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=PAPlayer

Good news, for the moment I am trying to have the GUI working, without any audio/video cores.

Quote:Feel free to start a new topic-thread in development forum if you are serious about porting XBMC to PowerPC (PPC) architecture yourself.

I am sure that you will be able to get help from our developers and other new developers might join in as well, it is just that no one want to take the lead in such a port project, (just as no one on Team-XBMC wanted to take lead in porting XBMC to Mac OS X before Elan stepped up, and no one wanted to take lead in the porting XBMC to Windows before WiSo stepped up, ...and now they are members of Team-XBMC and both those port projects are progressing very well, with more people assisting in the coding althought those still are leading the port process for those platforms.

It is more a feasability study right now, I will keep you informed.

Thank you

BLKMGK Wrote:Curious - how limiting is the processing power of the PPC chips commonly found in the target platforms discussed here? Video?

I do not know any benchmark for Linux, but for the mac mini power pc, the reading of a DVD uses 30% of the CPU, a mpeg4 (without h264) uses 15%

I do not have any HD content, but I read on some forum that the mac mini ppc is not powerfull enough.

I'll try to tread lightly since I understand that many PPC users won't like this but... does it make sense to port to the PPC if HD isn't possible? Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper in that case to just use an XBOX? Aside from someone perhaps simply having the PPC hardware laying around and not XBOX?