About

This website was created to produce a new PowerPC notebook.
We are looking for people that really have passion for innovation.

The passion for innovation and for this project have already motivated a producer to start the design of the motherboard of this PowerPC Notebook.
To make it produced and designed near our needs your participation makes the difference.
For us it’s nice to help and promote small hardware/software producers that really like doing something for innovation and for the progress of our society.

The GNU/Linux PowerPC notebook project wants to group together passionate people like you. These people with their involvement will make the difference to produce and design a new open source PowerPC notebook.

This is already a concrete project  in early stage of design; this notebook will go in production when we will have joined together a relatively small but strong community of enthusiasts.

The idea for this project was born from Roberto Innocenti (even if a producer was already thinking about it), and there are dozens of people who are working and pushing the project.

Below all the people that already have pushed our project  and like to make public that information, this list will be updated frequently ( if we have forgot someone please contact us).

Roberto Innocenti
Project Starter & Power Progress Community President
For me technology must be for improve the life of all peoples and not the pocket of few people. I’m a free software enthusiast and I like to help and promote little producers of hardware and software that really like doing something for innovation and for the progress of the humanity. For passion I’m involved to try humanize the life and society. I have launched the “GNU/Linux PowerPC notebook” project. My profession is Software Architect with Open Source tools
Guillermo Amat
Relationships and Spanish Translation
I was born in Spain in 1976. I like open source, Linux and I still have an
old Amiga which was my second computer and the reason of studying Computer
Science. I also own a PPC Mac Mini which runs Morphos. I’m helping this
project as a Spanish translator as I think a PPC notebook and Linux could
be a perfect combination but of course I would like to see other Operative
Systems running on it (AmigaOS and Morphos).
Bill Toner
Hardware Workgroup

My undergrad/B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology in USA. Am nearing completion of Masters Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in USA. I’ve just completed a significant “capstone” project semester using two kinds of Arduinos and a linux pc implementing a “smarthome” lichting and ceiling fan control system using Zigbee wireless control signalling.

I have about 16 years experience in semiconductor/chip design, including 5 years integrating in Verilog Arm Soc chips and simulating them with functional test software written in C.

I’m a fan of Amiga computers, which are currently based on PowerPC architecture. I’ve been pondering how to get a ppc laptop for about a decade, and am happy to see such a project with more than one person involved.

Steven Grunza
Hardware Workgroup

I studied Computer Engineering at Drexel University to learn how to build computers and further my software skills.

Most of my career has been a combination of writing embedded software or designing embedded hardware. My designs have included various technologies including 80486, 68360, MPC860, PPC745, Stratix FPGA’s, various CPLDs, and several members of the STM32F family ranging from STM32F2 to STM32F7.

I currently work as a Hardware Design Engineer creating schematics and board layouts from customer requirements.

Fadi Osman
Sofware Workgroup, French Translation
Born in 1974 – still using PowerPC with GNU/Linux on a daily basis (at home).
Although much of the things we do is somehow oriented by marketing and publicity, I believe it is important to offer people the right to run the software of their choice on the platform of their choice while protecting their essentials freedoms.
It is also as vital to have different platforms to work on.
Brock Wittrock
Software Workgroup

Born and raised in South Dakota, USA. Hold a bachelor’s in Computer Science from Dakota State University and just started my Master’s of Applied Computer Science with a specialization in Cyber Security there as well in the summer of 2016. I’m a programmer at heart and have experience with multiple languages but do system administrator work for my full-time job for the time being.

Became a PPC fanatic after buying a G5 PowerMac right after the PPC -> Intel transition for Apple. It was disappointing at the time but the more I played around with and studied the unique PPC architecture, the more I fell in love with it. I then learned to run Debian and other Linux distributions on older PPC hardware. I’m just starting to immerse myself in the Amiga culture and look forward to purchasing an x5000 when they are available. I have my own PPC Linux blog over at http://powerofpowerpc.blogspot.com.

Peter Czanik
Fedora ppc64 for PowerPC Notebook
Peter is community manager at BalaBit, developers of syslog-ng. In his limited free time he is interested in non-x86 architectures, and works on one of his PPC, ARM or MIPS machines. Once the PowerPC laptop and a working kernel are available, he plans to bring up Fedora and possibly openSUSE on it.
Roberto Guardato
Help on legalizing our association in Italy
I am passionate about computers and operating systems, I have a full time job and a family that takes up most of my days. I dedicate what little remains of my free time to my passions that are Amiga, programming in C / C ++ / Basic, Android, 8-bit microcontrollers, Linux, Morphos, AROS, AmigaOS addition to retrocomputing.
Mario Locati
1 of the Association Founders in Italy
I am a computer hobbyist with a passion for open source software and curious about idea based on open hardware. I work with GIS systems, LAMP stack, and PostgreSQL/PostGIS on Linux, Windows and OSX. In my spare time I use AmigaOS and MorphOS also. I own several PowerPC computers such as a Power Macintosh 8500, a Power Mac G4, a MacMini G4, a MacPro iMac G5, and a Sam460ex by ACube Systems. When I first heard about a project for building a PowerPC laptop based on CPUs by Freescale I promptly joined the effort.
Riccardo Mottola
Software Workgroup
Italian, class 1979, I hold a degree in Computer Science Engineering at
the Polytechnic of Milan. Interested since ever in programming and Unix.
I believe in Open Source as a way for expanding freedom, reducing
obsolescence and vendor lock-in, so am actively engaged in its
development. Mainly I am Developer and Maintainer in GNUstep and its
Applications and love to take care of a wide platform support for it,
different OSs and CPUs; I love the Objective-C language and which is
very suited for this goal.
I own and like to work on PowerPC (naturally!), MIPS, ARM CPUs, running
different versions of BSD and Linux.
Lately I became one of the two “founders” of Arctic Fox, a browser
forked from PaleMoon and Firefox that attempts to enhance support of
BigEndian and legacy OS versions.
Gianluca Renzi
Software workgroup – Package fixinig
Linux and embedded programmer. I love to spend time with my lovely daughters, playing american football and playing around with old computers!
Riccardo Sironi
Help with Physical Presentation in Italy
Class 1975 Computer Expert but for about 15 years working in the field of Public Health; I never lost the passion for computer science and particularly for the open source world and GNU / Linux systems, for which it supports the use within the Civil Service reality.
Stefan Förster
German Translation
I was born in 1966 in Augsburg, Germany. In 1992 I graduated in Mathematics from the University of Augsburg and started my career in reinsurance. Currently, my family and I areliving and working in Singapore. Apart from my work, I enjoy the sub-tropical climate and the excellent food in South East Asia. My main hobby is Computer Science, especially the administration of my Linux boxes. Besides that I am a great fan of the football clubs FC Augsburg and Albirex Niigata Singapore.
Aubert Guillemette
French Translation
I’m a computer science student from Canada. I currently study at Rouyn-Noranda’s Cegep, in Quebec. (A Cegep is similar to what they call colleges in the US. You should look for it on Wikipedia, there’s a good article about it.) I fell in love with open source software when, as a kid, my father installed Linux on the family’s computer.
Since then, I’ve been growing my interest for computers. I started collecting old computers from friends, neighbors and family.
Antonello Mangone
Translation
Antonello Mangone, born in Milan in 1972, he is a web developer since 1999.
He has worked on the most used technologies for web, but he always keeps informed about news in the web.
He works primarily on the LAMP stack, but also squeezes the eye to Python/Django and Ruby/ROR.
GNU / Linux has been love at first sight, and since then it was never abandoned!
Saulo Paiva
Portuguese Translation
My name is Saulo Paiva, and I work as an IT Operations Engineer.
I’ve been always interested in the history of computing, exotic different hardware, and how it evolves, etc.
On the personal side, I love photography and music – I guess I love too many things to have time to all of them. And I miss the times when we had different processor platforms to choose from.
Adam Mierzwa
Polish Translation
Born in Poland 1973, Amiga computer enthusiast, also in the newest edition (AmigaOS 4.x).
Henrick Johannson
Forum Moderator
Born in Sweden 1980, picked up a computer interest in early age with his cousins C64. Moved on in the 90s to Amiga and later Windows->Mac->Linux->MorphOS.
Over the years became a real PPC fanatic and uses PPC hardware daily.
Owns 12 computers at home on which 5 are PPC based.
Has experience demoing hardware and software and managing forums. Other interests: Pen and paper Roleplaying games, cooking and meat.
François Téchené
Media Production
I am a french film director and animator mainly working for the UK film company Free Seed Films. My most recent work includes the last 3 music videos of the Blockheads and a promotional campaign for No More Page 3. I have some interest in retro computing as well as in free software / hardware philosophy. I think that PowerPC is part of a healthy bio-diversity in computer technologies.
Hardware Manufacturer
Design & Manufacturing of the PowerPC Notebook

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22 thoughts on “About

  1. This project is VERY exciting to me and other ‘post Mactel era’ PPC developers. A quick question: Is there a possibility of a Free/OpenBSD flavor or option in this new system? Have noted a lot of long-term stability/usability issues with Linux (Ubuntu) and would really hope that BSD/Unix will be workable, as it has such great stability.

    • I’m happy that this project is VERY exciting to you!
      So I invite you to join the team!
      About Free/OpenBSD option depend if Free/OpenBSD run on modern new PowerPC cpu. I’m not an expert of Free/OpenBSD… Please update us if you have more info about the PowerPC cpu that Free/OpenBsd support. Thanks

  2. As you might have heard, Jordan Hubbard, who helped to design OSX has left Apple to work on FreeBSD. Will reach out to him and ask if what he thinks the chances are of a PPC port, or source-code availably for such a process. BTW, are you all shooting for straightforward G4 32/64 performance, or ‘Big-Power’ (G5+) code base?

    Lastly, are you accepting submissions for body/case designs??

    Thanks Again!!!!

    • Adam I think your idea about PPC port is a great idea ,the PowerPC Notebook will have a 64bit PowerPC multi-tread processor with AltiVec accelerator, that can run Debian and Ubuntu powerpc 32bit.
      It’s not needed a body/case design, we have already solved this problem. 😀

  3. If you contact the NG Amiga community, with emphasis on the companies of acube aeon tech you might find some friends, and depending on your intent and genuineness, help.

  4. Very cool. I’ve been doign a thought-experiment design of such a thing myself for several years, and have begun a graduate school Masters Degree in Electrical Engienering to get into some study topics such as signal integrity toward this goal. As you mention Altivec and 64bit, I must assume that you are talking Freescale e6500 core processors, which I’m very happy aout, and also very happy to see that MXM graphics is mentioned. I would love to participate in this discussion, btu am not able to attend Milan. Will there be an online method of participating in Milan discussions, or following discussions after that?

    I have been told that my own idea wants too much, but from my point of view I would likely only do this one time, and thus I want the result to be relevant for as far into the future as I could make it, and as expandable as a laptop using industry standards can be. (MXM, ExpresCard2, and of course miniPCIe, MSATA, NGFF/M.2, whatever is most sensible) and I’m curious what your view of expansion is. I would also pair SoC style CPU with southbridge, as A_Eon did with their Nemo / AmigaOne X1000 desktop board for sound, USB3, and other things missing from current SoC.

    Is the hardware design to be open, or is the hardware encumbered by NDAs and this is merely intended for open-source PPC OS?

    • Bill very good your background! After some requests I have decided to record the presentation of the project at LinuxDay in Milan.
      The design will not be open but we accept suggestions…
      After the presentation in Milan,we will organize discussions with the people interested.

  5. +1 For the AmigaOS-track here. Me and many others are just dying waiting for a laptop running the slim, powerful and ultra efficient AmigaOS 4.1. Any specs you can give us relating to the new hardware would be helpful. I’m not involved personally in the development/testing of AmigaOS any longer but could point them in this direction if they haven’t noticed this project already.

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