Origin of the architecture name and other terms

The main misperception most people have is in thinking the "PC" in the PowerPC name means PC in the way they know.  It does not stand for personal computer.  PowerPC is an acronym for Performance optimization with enhanced risc Performance Computing.  I believe the capital P and C at the end is what leads most to think it means personal computer.

For those that don't know what "RISC" means, I can assure you it doesn't mean it takes any type of risk.  RISC and CISC are the two fundamental computer architecture bases.  RISC means reduced instruction set computer, and CISC means complex instruction set computer.  ARM, Power and PowerPC are examples of RISC.  Intel and AMD are examples of CISC.  Reduced instruction does not mean it skips things but rather that it carries more data per cycle.  CISC pipelines can be over 20 steps long compared to under 10 for most RISC architectures.  PowerPC systems, like the G4 for example, only need 7 steps in the pipeline.

Personal computer is another term that has been horrifically misused over the years.  PC is the acronym that was started for computers that could sit on a desk, in the era which most still took up whole rooms or at least an entire wall of a room.  The PC term has somehow evolved into meaning wintel/x86 hardware specifically when it really means any computer that can fit on a table.  All Mac hardware is as much a PC as any wintel system.  The sad fact is that Apple themselves have helped twist this term.  They are easily the biggest culprit in all this to be honest.  They have used the term themselves since the 80's to separate the Mac from the rest of the industry.  The proper term for a windows PC is "Wintel".  This term started to specifically mean a Windows system powered by Intel but has evolved to mean windows systems in general.  I assume this was due to Intel's dominance especially early on in the game.   

Although I respect the names of anything PowerPC related that uses the "PPC" term this is an incorrect way to refer to it.  When it comes to the technology industry as a whole most people would take PPC to mean pocket PC.  This is the term used in the CorePlayer pocket PC version and the one that fools the unknowing into thinking they have found Mac copies of it online.  For the record the Mac copy has always been named CorePlayer OS X.  To be fair to those that use PPC I cannot blame them because there are actually developers that use it so it's easy to mistake it for a legitimate acronym.  All the BSD versions available on PowerPC for example are all referred to as PPC as are several Linux distros.  Mainstream Mac software sites like MacUpdate always use PPC also. 

It was years of hearing and seeing these terms misused combined with the google search hits I get here that motivated me to write this.  It's shocking how many separate the power and pc when they type it.  It is an acronym and they don't have spaces.  So once again, the "PC" at the end of PowerPC stands for performance computing.

The doctor is in

PowerPC Liberation welcomes a new writer to the fold today.  Dr. Dave is someone you may know from his active participation as a commenter and knowledge spreader from PPC Luddite and on this blog along with several others he frequents.

Since my busy life keeps me from posting as much as I would like it was only natural to go this route.  Two heads are better than one as they say, and in this situation that is certainly an apt description.   The "Dr" in his blogger name is no front either.  He's the real deal. 

When it came time to add another author here, Dave was the first person I thought of.  He is a man of great intelligence and technical comprehension, but is far too modest to even understand that about himself.  He has a real knack for sniffing out the greatest software on earth, and has on several occasions.  It's always very cleanly coded and efficient software also, which shows he not only gets it but has no taste for bloat.  My kind of techie.

So please join me in welcoming the doctor.

MacTubes 3.1.6 is out

***Important Notice***

May 15, 2015

MacTubes is now officially dead.

After not needing an update for over 2 years, Google once again changed their API, and MacTubes is broken again, and it looks like for good this time.  The developer has announced that they have abandoned the project.  So MacTubes is now officially abandonware.  You can grab the source code here and try to bring it back to life yourself, but it will be no easy task; even for a seasoned developer.


Alternatives

Your alternatives now are really just two - two good ones anyway.  Using HTML5 on the site to view videos, which can be done in 90% of all browsers, as only older ones or text-only options are excluded.  My personal preference is to use PPC Media Center.  Dan the Luddite has posted about this software here and also here on his blog.


PPC MC Update: Nov. 5, 2015

There is now a 5.5 release, which is also PowerPC only instead of universal, of PPC Media Center.  You can download it here.

DigiNotar neglect on PowerPC

Today I was looking through Keychain, and was reminded of the DigiNotar certificate simply through memory, because it hasn't lived on any of my macs since late 2011.  It's one of those things I set and literally forget in this case.  Luckily for the sake of a screenshot, I have an older drive I keep with a stock Leopard install for just these occasions.

In 2011 Apple announced that they were no longer going to update Leopard at all on PowerPC or Intel.  Then around spring 2012, they ended up releasing a security update for Leopard that fixed the DigiNotar issue.  This update was Intel only unfortunately.  Truly pathetic.  Thanks Apple.

The good news is that disabling or deleting this vulnerable certificate is very easy.  For the ultimate level of security when it comes to certificates like this, you should use a browser with a private browsing function, along with script blocking.  Those things combined together would give you a browsing environment nearly as secure as current OS X, and even save you a bunch of CPU cycles.

Along with DigiNotar, you should make it a habit to look through your certificates every so often, and delete or mark as "Never Trust" to disable any expired items that might exist.


How to disable DigiNotar or any other certificate:

1. Open "Keychain Access" from the Utilities folder in Applications.

2. Select "System Roots" in the top left.  It may take a moment to show them all.

3. Navigate to the "DigiNotar Root" certificate.  Double click to disable or select and delete.

4. If you're choosing not to delete and have double clicked it simply expand the "Trust" settings.

5. Set the top option named "When using this certificate" to "Never Trust" which will automatically set all the trust functions the same way.  Use the screenshot below for reference.

Screenshot


I will be sure to update you in the future when other certificates or anything else becomes vulnerable.  These days I am paying more and more attention to Leopard security, because it is at a point now where it will only become less secure as the months and years go by.  There are far too many people that are either in denial or ignorant to this fact.

Linux content and your ideas

I am currently working on plans for a few of my own ideas for upcoming Linux content, but would also like to hear some of the reader ideas.  Like the OS X content and your ideas post last month, I am always open to content ideas the readers would like covered.

What Linux related things do you guys need the most help with?  What type of content would you like more of? 

This will also be a good way to gauge what the new to Linux people are having the most issues with.  There also needs to be content for the more advanced users, so I want to hear about ideas for those as well.  It's not that I have any problems with thinking up new things to write, but rather that I also want to write content the regular readers want to see.

Let the ideas flow.

Luakit

Luakit is a very lightweight Webkit based browser for Linux. I was told about this a while ago by dr. dave, who is a regular reader here, and who's comments are always very helpful and interesting. Thanks again, Dave.

Description of it from the Luakit site:

"Luakit is a highly configurable, browser framework based on the Webkit web content engine and the GTK+ toolkit. It is very fast, extensible by Lua and licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license. It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people with too much time on their hands who want to have fine-grained control over their web browsers behaviour and interface."

For the last couple weeks I have been playing with it, and I am extremely impressed by the speed and simplicity of it.  There is virtually no overhead at all.  My G4 500MHz Stormtrooper runs it at a clip that would satisfy even the most impatient of people.  With 4 tabs open right now it is using 37MB RAM.  It launches in approx. 1.5 seconds on an old PATA HD, and most sites load in 2-5 seconds.  This blog loads in about 2 seconds. 


The basics

To load a page, run "luakit url"

Control + T loads a new tab

The rest is all up to you via config files.  Here is a list of the config files available for editing:

• rc.lua -- is the main config file which dictates which and in what order different parts of the browser are loaded.
• binds.lua -- defines every action the browser takes when you press a button or combination of buttons (even mouse buttons, direction key, etc) and the browser commands (I.e. :quit, :restart, :open, :lua , etc).
• theme.lua -- change fonts and colours used by the interface widgets.
• window.lua -- is responsible for building the luakit browser window and defining several helper methods (I.e. w:new_tab(uri), w:close_tab(), w:close_win(), etc).
• webview.lua -- is a wrapper around the webview widget object and is responsible for watching webview signals (I.e. "key-press", "load-status", "resource-request-starting", etc). This file also provides several window methods which operate on the current webview tab (I.e. w:reload(), w:eval_js("code here.."), w:back(), w:forward()).
• modes.lua -- manages the modal aspect of the browser and the actions that occur when switching modes.
• globals.lua -- change global options like scroll/zoom step, default window size, useragent, search engines, etc.

Who should use it

For those that prefer pointing and clicking everything they do, this may not be the one for you.  People that don't like using run commands to load pages will certainly be turned off. 

For those that are comfortable computing like this, or at least want to learn to be, this is an extremely flexible screamer of a browser.  The performance is blinding fast for the G4 500MHz it's running on.  A faster system could only do better.


How to install

Fire up the "Root Terminal" in Debian or MintPPC and type:

apt-get install luakit