Prototypes could arrive in late September

Posted on by Communications Team

Until today, the Prototypes campaign covered five prototypes with a goal of €11,000. We have now reduced the number of prototypes to three in order to cut costs, so the campaign goal has been updated to €9,100 — great news!

Powerboard Tyche Desktop rendering based on the PCB design loaded for Prototype production

Power Progress Community ODV and ACube Systems are putting our hearts into this challenge: we have signed the contract with the manufacturer to start prototype production, even though we have less than three months left to raise the remaining funds needed to cover the production costs.

All the donors who have supported this project for years — first for the Notebook prototypes, and now for the Desktop — want something tangible and functional. This is why we have signed to start prototype production, aiming to have the prototypes ready by the end of September 2026.

Our desktop design reuses a significant part of the latest (2023) version of the solid, proven source design of the NXP T2080RDB Development Kit, combined with elements of our own design — USB3, audio chip, dual RAM slots, and other features we originally defined in late 2017 for our first notebook motherboard, with additional features added in 2025 for the desktop. You can go more deep on this redesign.

In January 2026, our desktop board design was reviewed by NXP, resulting in a few fixes that allowed us to improve the quality and robustness of our design

Prototype production setup will begin after the summer holidays, starting on 24 August 2026, and we will keep you updated on progress. It is possible, though not easy, to have the prototype ready by the end of September 2026 — we are doing our best to make that happen.

  1. Prototypes of Desktop Powerboard Tyche
    Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will:put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardwareenable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-BootThe sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics SourcesOur GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.
    €5,001.56 donated of €9,100.00 goal

    Read More

Over the past months, your support and donations have been incredibly generous, allowing us to fund the PCB design quickly and already reach a good percentage of the current donation campaign. Thanks to your generosity, we believe we can reach the goal in time.

We remain fully committed to making an open-hardware, notebook-based PowerPC machine a reality. The desktop version is the right step to let more people own, enjoy, and test software on this platform while spending less money.The notebook fork will resume once the desktop version is in production.

A closer look at our desktop motherboard

As you can see in the board block diagram below, here are some more details about the board:

  • High-quality audio (optical digital audio inputs and outputs, six analog RCA connectors for 7.1 surround sound, separate ground connections for the analog and digital sections to ensure maximum sound clarity)
  • Two DDR3/DDR3L slots
  • Three PCIe connectors (one PCIe Gen3 x4 on an x16 slot for a video card, one PCIe Gen2 x4 for a secondary video card, one PCIe Gen2 x1)
  • I2C/UART connector
  • Two M.2 slots (one 80 mm, based on PCIe Gen3 x4, for the primary SSD; one 30/42/60/80 mm, based on PCIe Gen2 x4)
  • Two SATA2 connectors
  • One microSD slot
  • Four USB3 ports (2 rear, 2 front)
  • Two USB2 ports (rear)
  • Two Ethernet ports (allowing firewall use)

The NXP T2080 Processor include DPAA incorporating acceleration for the following functions:

  • Packet parsing, classification and distribution up to 24Gb/s (FMAN)
  • Queue management for scheduling, packet sequencing and congestion management of up to 2^24 queues (QMAN)
  • Hardware buffer management for buffer allocation and de-allocation with 64 buffer pools (BMAN)
  • ntegrated security acceleration (SEC) to 10 Gbp
  • Decompression/compression acceleration at up to 17.5 Gbps (DCE)
  • Signature detection (PME) to 10Gb/s
  • DPAA support of RapidIO® messaging (RMAN)
Powerboard Tyche Desktop Silkscreen

Running Debian PowerPC from 2016 with PowerPC NXP T2080 processor

Since 2016 we have been testing Debian PPC64 on our T2080RDB devkit, which was also used during 2023–2025 to test our past notebook prototypes (it broke down this year, likely due to the stress of transport), as well as on the many Mac G4/G5 machines owned by our volunteers.

We have a second T2080RDB devkit, kindly lent to us by an NXP employee over the past two years, which we have used to develop the U-Boot Radeon driver and for comparison testing against our notebook prototype board — and which will also be useful for testing the new desktop board with our JTAG debugger.

Debian 13 PowerPC installer

Thanks to Debian, in June 2026 the PPC64 and PowerPC (32-bit) Debian 13 installer was released, and we have successfully tested it on our Mac G4/G5 machines.

Debian 13 PowerPC Kernel 7.1.5 installed on PowerBook G4
Debian 13 PPC64 Kernel 7.1.5 installed on Imac G5

Debian 13 PowerPC Kernel 7.1.5 installed on PowerBook G4 768 Mb Ram

ArcticFox, how could we manage without you?

We even tested successfully the latest releasee 47.3 of ArcticFox Browser for PowerPC (32bit) oWe have also successfully tested the latest release, 47.3, of the ArcticFox browser for PowerPC (32-bit) on a G4.

Having a modern browser that runs on PowerPC is vitally important. ArcticFox runs exceptionally well on PowerPC — without it, what would we do?

If you’d like to try ArcticFox on any of its supported platforms (Mac OS X 10.6+, Linux [PowerPC, x86, amd64, ARM, MIPS], NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows XP), you can reach out directly at https://github.com/rmottola/Arctic-Fox or If you’d like to help bring ArcticFox to PowerPC you can contact us.

There are two open issues to resolve for the upcoming ArcticFox 48.0 release, both related to Big Endian compilation (required for PowerPC and PPC64):

NSS Upgrade compiles but breaks TLS

FreeBSD Fails to run and packages

15% of Donations for Prototypes production of Powerboard Tyche Desktop

Posted on by Communications Team

As of 31 May, we have completed the fundraising campaign to cover the cost of the PCB designs for our Tyche Desktop Open Hardware Powerboard. Thanks to your generous donations, we have exceeded the campaign’s target, meaning that the new campaign to produce prototypes of the board is already underway with 15% of the funds raised.

All the donors who have been supporting the project for years – first the Notebook and now the Desktop – want something tangible and functional; this is why we must continue this race against time to raise funds so that we can produce the prototypes by September 2026.

We remain absolutely committed to making an Open-Hardware Notebook-based PowerPC machine a reality. The desktop version is the right step to allow more people, spending less money, to soon own, enjoy, and test software on this Desktop version. With a few changes and reintegrating the battery part of our previous Notebook, it will give rise to the Notebook version!

Prototypes of Desktop Powerboard Tyche

Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will:

  • put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardware
  • enable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-Boot

The sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics Sources

Our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

Specs

Form Factor: Micro ATX – measuring 244 mm in height and 172 mm in width.

CPU: NXP T2080, e6500 64-bit Power Architecture with Altivec technology 4 x e6500 dual-threaded cores, low-latency backside 2MB L2 cache, 16GFLOPS x core

RAM: 2 x DDR3 slots

VIDEO

  • PCIE3 x16 VIDEO Card 1
  • PCIE2 x4 VIDEO Card 2

AUDIO: C-Media 8828 sound chip, audio IN and audio OUT jacks

  • it features optical digital audio inputs and outputs,
  • 6 analog RCA connectors for 7.1 surround sound,
  • separate ground connections for the analog and digital sections to ensure maximum sound clarity.

USB: Four 3.0 and Two 2.0 ports

STORAGE:

  • NVM Express (NVMe)
  • M.2 2280 connector
  • 2 x SATA2
  • 1 x SDHC card reader

NETWORK:

  • 2 x Gigabit ethernet RJ-45 connector

Donated: 54.96%
Goal: €9,100.00
54.96% Raised
€5,001.56 donated
16 Donors
35 Days Left
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  • Milestone

    Phase 1: Schematics Design (done)

    Phase 2: PCB Design (done)

    Phase 3: Prototypes Production: goal 27.09.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    Phase 4: Prototypes Tests. : goal 31.10.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    The timing of milestone depend from your donation. Thanks!

  • Headline

    Payment Methods

    Online Donation – PayPal

    Press Donate and as Payment Method select PayPal You can choose one time donations, or recurring -smaller- monthly donations ( and with others selected frequency). ( How stop paypal recurring payment )

    Online Donation – Stripe

    Press Donate and as Payment Method select Stripe You can choose one time donations, or recurring -smaller- monthly donations ( and with others selected frequency).

    Offline Donation – Bank credit transfer

    These are the bank account details for donating:

    Bank name: Banca Popolare Etica

    Bank account owner: Power Progress Community OdV

    IBAN: IT94X0501801600000012339610

    Beneficiary Bank (57)

    Code BIC/ SWIFT: ETICIT22XXX

    Banca popolare Etica SCPA Via N. Tommaseo 7, 35131 Padova (PD)

    Intermediary Bank (56A)

    Code BIC/ SWIFT: POSOIT22XXX

    Banca popolare di Sondrio

    Piazza Garibaldi 16, 23100 Sondrio (SO)

    CAUSE:“liberal donation – NAME and SURNAME”

    ( for person with italian fiscal code if you specify your fiscal code your donation is tax deducible)

    Where the NAME and SURNAME are the same you will fill in the Donate page.

    After you have made the bank transfer press Donate and as Payment Method select Offline Donation.

    In Offline donation the recurring donations is only a declaration of intent as the system doesn't do anything for you.

    Anonymous Donations

    When you make the donation (offline or online) you can choose to make your donation anonymous.

    Preferred payment method and TransferWise / CurrencyFair

    Our preferred payment method to receive donations (to keep commission and also your costs low) would be:

    • EU donors: Bank Transfer (online or offline)
    • Non-EU donors: Bank Transfer with services like Wise or CurrencyFair

    <br...

    Donations are liberal and not refundable

    The Power Progress Community is a nonprofit organization established in Italy. The Italian law allow to collect liberal and not refundable donations meant to pursue the missions and projects of the association and not give back products.

    Restrictions for a nonprofit associations in Italy

    An organization like ours has to take into account the following constraints:

    1. A nonprofit association cannot make commercial products;
    2. The association can receive donations, but cannot refund them;
    3. The association must be coherent with its mission, and is allowed to ask for donations for their achieving the goals.

    So, what we can do to start our project is based on the points below:

    1. The association can have a particular goal to reach and ask donation to achieve it, but it cannot give back the money (no refunds).
    2. Donation must be altruist so, no one will receive something back for their donation.
    3. Italian law allows an association to finance an R&D for a project or activity.

    What happens if the campaign fails?

    As stated above, we will not be able to refund the donors in any case. Because of that, if the money collected is not enough to fund this research we will use it for another goal within the mission of the organization.

    Will all the received money be used for the research

    Almost, as any payment platform available, either PayPal, Stripe or the Bank account transfers, have a fee applied to each donation. As non-profit organization we have inside EU 1,8%+0,35euro of commission, outside EU 2,8%+0,35 euro ( from some country we see that could arrive to 4% of commission) for paypal. In case your bank transfer is from outside EU, for us bank commission cost is high: 6 euro, so we strongly suggest to use service like Transferwise to decrease the commission cost for both.

    Open Hardware

    As a final remark, we will try to adhere to the Open Source Hardware requirements in the design of this laptop motherboard, therefore we are strongly committed in avoiding any hardware component requiring an NDA (Not Disclosure Agreement).

    For this purpose, we have contacted many chips vendors in order to verify their agreement to distribute as Open Source Hardware our electrical schematics and PCB design obtained in this second campaign.

    Among others, NXP which is the company producing the selected CPU, has answered positively for the Powerboard Tyche Notebook that had taken from T2080RDB Revision C design, now we are waiting the level and parts that they agreed for T2080RDB Revision F, that's the new version that we have use for the new design of Powerboard Tyche Desktop,

    The process required to achieve a fully compliant Open Hardware motherboard, was carefully analyzed by students of the Law and Policy Clinic of New York University School of Law. Thanks to their work, are clear the practical implications of the requirements for the OSWHA Open Hardware certification, and cross-checked our approach and adopted solutions with OSWHA personnel.

    An important part of being considered Open Hardware compliant (OSHWA Open Hardware certification), require that everything that is under our control and that is used to produce our motherboard, should be publicly disclosed, such as schematics, PCB, Gerber-files and all their accompanying information.

    As a consequence, most of the datasheets of the chips used in our schematics are freely downloadable, as well as the schematics and the PCB design.

    In case some of the chip vendors will ask us to remove technical details that we were not supposed to disclose, we will comply to their requests by removing the published material, but that will do not impact on our compliance to OSHWA Open Hardware certification because we could demonstrate that we strived to be as open as we could.

    We are sure that you will be satisfied by the final PCB design, and you will be proud of being one of the contributors that could make materialize the first and only Open Hardware complaint PowerPC desktop motherboard designed around GNU/Linux!!​

Open Hardware schematics

On the 24th of April 2026 we published on our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

The meaning of our Open Hardware projects

It is so important that every country, every community needs to have people capable of designing, producing and validating electronics and software powering every building, vehicle, hospital, medical devices, school, university, aqueduct, sewage treatment, power plant, every piece of the infrastructure we depend on for our lives.

And that’s why is so important that we complete an Open Hardware Desktop designed around free software, involving students, and young, and previously young people, to be able to build the bricks of our society.

Thanks to your support, this Open Hardware Desktop first, and then the Notebook, will demonstrate in practice that a group of common people could create computers that respect our freedom.

Debian ppc64

Join us to Help on Debian PPC64 Big Endian packages

In case you have not PowerPC hardware we can give you access to the Power9 VM we have free at Open Source Lab at Oregon Stage University. thanks to the support of , so you can test and fix the package inside this VM.

More Info

Let’s stay in touch!

We have been on the Fediverse for a few years now. You can find and follow us at: hostux.social/@powerprogress. Please follow us and share our posts to spread the word. Thank you for your continued support!

KiCad Schematics sources published, waiting funds for prototypes

Posted on by Communications Team

On the 24th of April 2026 we published on our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.

As KiCad cannot yet import OrCad schematics, this is a 2-hop OrCad→Altium→KiCad flow.

The KiCad pages are out of order. There are two KiCad directories in this repository: one exactly as imported from Altium (KiCad_outOfOrder), and another where our volunteers attempted to change the page numbers to match the filenames, but they did not reorder in the sheet page listing — they are still in the same random-looking order. We are investigating how to fix this at some point, as the file with “01” in the filename should come first, since it contains the table of contents, in order for everything to line up correctly. Other than the ordering issue, it looks reasonable.

If you would like to help check the quality of the conversion to KiCad and potentially work to improve it, please contact us.

Schematics Donation Campaign updated its goal and completed — PCB Donation Campaign updated its goal with around €3,500 still needed to reach it

On 6th April 2026, thanks to the funds collected for the Notebook CE certification and due to the temporary halt of Notebook motherboard production, the association used €2,130 from that previous campaign to pay and balance the Desktop Schematics design costs that are €6,250.

A further €8,000 from association funds was used to pay a portion of the PCB costs in advance. The total cost of the PCB design is around €12,500; since €8,000 came from association funds, we have reduced the goal of the PCB donation campaign to €4,500.

  1. Prototypes of Desktop Powerboard Tyche
    Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will:put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardwareenable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-BootThe sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics SourcesOur GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.
    €5,001.56 donated of €9,100.00 goal

As you can see to reach the goal of this campaign we need to receive donations of around €3,100 to settle the balance with ACube for the PCB design before the end of May.

From March 2026 the PCB design has been completed and is in our hands, we are waiting funds to start prototype production.

To produce the first five prototypes, we need a total of around €9,000. Once we have the cash flow to balance the PCB design and to make this commitment to the manufacturer, we will sign the contract to proceed with production. To avoid further delays, we need significantly more donations.

Image by May Angelike from Pixabay

Join us to Help on Debian PPC64 Big Endian packages

Debian ppc64

Do you have already installed Debian 13 PPC64 on your G5 or Debian 13 PPC on your G4?

More info how to do it on our forum.

In case you have not PowerPC hardware we can give you access to the Power9 VM we have free at Open Source Lab at Oregon Stage University. thanks to the support of , so you can test and fix the package inside this VM.

If you want to investigate which are the packages that are compiled successfully on PPC64

link build debian ppc64

powerpc ( 32 bit) https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=powerpc&suite=sid

To verify if a bug is already reported on the Debian bug tracking system

How to report a bug https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting

To fix and build a debian package

‘sbuild’, which is the software used to build Debian packages in a clean environment.

To get it working, all you need to do is create a file called  ‘release-name-architecture.tar’ in the ~/.cache/sbuild/ folder, which contains a minimal Debian system.

To create these tar files containing Debian images, is suggested to use another  little tool called ‘mmdebstrap’. It’s very similar to its cousin, “debootstrap”, which you may have heard of, but it’s a bit faster.

Finally, if you’re comfortable working with Git, we recommend the tool  “dgit”, which essentially allows you to download and build any Debian package in a consistent manner, without having to worry about how the package maintainer themselves works with it.

So, in terms of the commands to use on your machine:

mmdebstrap --variant=buildd unstable ~/.cache/sbuild/unstable-ppc64.tar
    dgit clone mbedtls
    cd mbedtls
    dgit sbuild

Contacts us

We are ready for prototype production!

Posted on by Communications Team

The PCB design is finally complete, and we are officially ready for prototype production.

However, before taking the big step, we need to balance the PCB design costs:

  • 3,050 euros at the end of April;
  • 3,050 euros at the end of May;

To produce the first five prototypes, we need a total of around 9,000 euros. Until we have the cash flow to make this commitment with the manufacturer, we will not sign the contract to go into production.

  1. Powerboard Tyche Desktop Electrical Schematics Design
    Thanks of this donation campaign we will pay for three Dekstop Powerboard Tyche physical prototypes, a very important step that will: put the PCB design to the test allow to learn how to correctly initialize the hardware enable the fine-tuning the configuration of U-Boot The sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP Open Hardware Schematics Sources Our GitLab repository https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community/oshw-powerpc-desktop-tyche/-/tree/main/KiCad?ref_type=heads the OrCad schematics source, converted to Altium and then imported into KiCad, thanks to our association members.
    €4,120.00 donated of €4,120.00 goal

Schematics are already published in pdf format on our gitlab repository

Why aren’t we publishing the PCB design yet?

We will only be able to publish the open-source design after paying the design costs and only when prototype production is underway. This is for two fundamental reasons:

  1. Before paying, we do not own the rights to the source files.
  2. The source files will only be considered final after physically testing the prototypes.

Furthermore, our manufacturer ACube Systems can only afford to produce the Desktop board for the first time if no one else beats them to the market. After all the hard work done to make this dream a reality, it is our duty to protect them.

A special campaign: win the historic laptop PCB!

Since the current donation flow is insufficient to cover the design costs and start production, we are exploring new ways to raise funds.

One of the ideas we are considering is a special giveaway: we will raffle off a PCB from our previous prototype (the laptop version) among all donors who contribute from now until we reach the 9,000 euro goal.

Please note: this is a “dummy” PCB (non-functional), produced solely to verify the physical dimensions of the board. It was never an operational prototype. We hope this piece of our journey’s history can motivate the community to help us cross the finish line!

T-shirts, gadgets, and the “DY Maker” spirit

We are preparing T-shirts and other gadgets dedicated to the PowerPC Notebook and Desktop projects, also linked to our association DY Maker mindset.

We collaborate with volunteers to create the opportunity to experience hands-on learning, to inspire creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving by trying to conceive, design, and produce what we need or desire. We encourage this culture from primary schools to University, with no age limit.

Soon we will ask you to vote on different options for T-shirts and gadgets. After that, we will open pre-orders for t-shirts, stickers, and much more!

Our recent events

We have been very active locally:

  • March 13 – Bolzano, Italy: We shared our project with electronics students at Free University of Bozen · Bolzano – Faculty of Engineering – Electronics and Information Engineering, just as we did in Milan in May 2025. In agreement with the professors, we discussed possible university theses in collaboration with our association.
  • March 14 – Trento, Italy: We were hosted by Hack in Povo in collaboration with LinuxTrent, where we presented the history of our projects.

Desktop board specifications

Our Desktop board is a Micro ATX measuring 244 mm in height and 172 mm in width. When it comes to audio, we didn’t hold back: it features optical digital audio inputs and outputs, 6 analog RCA connectors for 7.1 surround sound, and separate ground connections for the analog and digital sections to ensure maximum sound clarity.

Software and PCB source roadmap

  • Stage 1: Soon we will convert the Schematics source files from Cadence to Altium, and then to KiCad. In the meantime, there is a free viewer for Orcad sources at this official Cadence link. We also point out an interesting open project that has started importing Orcad sources directly into KiCad: OpenOrCadParser.
  • Stage 2: Thanks to your donations, once we have collected enough funds to balance the design and prototypes, we will merge and import the PCB source files from PADS directly into KiCad. This is now possible thanks to the brand new importers introduced in KiCad 10: learn more on the KiCad blog.

  1. PCB Design of Desktop Powerboard Tyche
    Starting from the source of the Electronic Schematics design design the PCB means prepare all physical PCB layers lanes and components disposition and connection to go in production with prototypes. Designer have take from NXP Devkit design ( 2023 version) everything is related to boot process and many parts from our Notebook design, except what is not needed for Dekstop version, like the Battery part.
    €4,100.00 donated of €4,100.00 goal

Let’s stay in touch!

We have been on the Fediverse for a few years now. You can find and follow us at: hostux.social/@powerprogress. Please follow us and share our posts to spread the word. Thank you for your continued support!

Arctic Fox v47.0: the modern web on PowerPC is still possible!

Posted on by Communications Team

It has been six years since we published our interview with Riccardo Mottola, one of the pillars of software development for our favorite architecture. In it, we talked about the vital importance of having an up-to-date browser to make a PowerPC computer usable in the modern world. At that time, we were anticipating the release of version 27.11.0.

Today we are happy to announce that that mission not only continues, but has reached a new, important milestone: Arctic Fox version 47.0 has been released.

While our hardware team fights with oscilloscopes and development boards, tireless developers continue to refine the software that will run on our future notebook.

Six years of evolution: from v27 to v47

The numerical leap from v27.11.0 to v47.0 represents far more than just a version bump; it signifies a massive architectural overhaul. In the silence between our blog posts, Riccardo has been relentlessly bridging the gap between legacy hardware and the increasingly complex modern web.

During these years, the focus has been on two critical fronts: compatibility and standards. The web didn’t stop evolving in 2020, and sites that worked then would be broken today without this work. Riccardo has backported hundreds of security patches and functionality updates from the Mozilla and Pale Moon codebases. This includes implementing modern TLS standards to ensure secure connections, rewriting the media backends to fix audio/video playback on Big Endian systems, and optimizing the code to leverage AltiVec instructions, ensuring that the browser feels responsive even on older G4 and G5 processors, as well as our target NXP T2080.

What’s new in v47.0?

This release is not a simple maintenance update. The recently released v47.0 brings fundamental structural changes to navigate the web of 2026 with dignity on “alternative” hardware.

Here are the main novelties extracted from the changelog:

  • JavaScript Engine Enhanced: Extensive updates have been made to the JavaScript engine, introducing critical new capabilities such as async functions and support for Wasm (WebAssembly). This is a giant step for compatibility with modern web apps.
  • Graphics and Multimedia: Significant updates in WebGL and ANGLE, as well as an update to the libcubeb library for better audio management and video playback.
  • Security and Core: Updates to NSS (Network Security Services) and fdlibm libraries, as well as improvements in the netwerk module, DOM, and DevTools.
  • Mac Compatibility: For friends following us from the vintage Apple world, the minimum target compatibility for compilation on macOS has been raised from 10.9 to 10.10, although native compilation remains possible on 10.6 and WebCam available there.
ArcticFox running on real PowerPC G4 Hardware and GNU/Linux

A solo journey (that needs you!)

Maintaining a fork of Firefox/Pale Moon on a Big Endian architecture like PowerPC is a huge technical challenge. It requires solving bugs that developers on x86 or ARM will never see, handling endianness, and optimizing code to exploit specific instructions like AltiVec.

We want to give special credit to Riccardo Mottola, who has been carrying this torch almost single-handedly. His dedication to keeping this browser alive is practically a solo effort, a labor of love that benefits us all. It is our sincere hope, and his too, that other developers will step forward to lend a hand. If you have experience with C++, Mozilla’s codebases, or PowerPC optimization, your contribution could make a massive difference.

Arctic Fox v47.0 is proof that planned obsolescence can be fought with code and passion. You can download the binaries for Linux PowerPC (and other architectures) directly from the official release page.

Thanks again to Riccardo for his tireless work!

Beyond the code

Riccardo’s passion for keeping classic technologies alive extends beyond computing. He is also an avid photographer with a deep respect for tradition. Coming from a family of photographers, learning the essentials from his grandfather and even using his great-grandfather’s cameras, he specializes in traditional film and manual photography. Much like his approach to software, he values the authentic process, often developing his own black-and-white film and avoiding digital manipulation. You can admire his work, which ranges from landscapes to aerial photography, in his photography portfolio.