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 the interview with Riccardo Mottola, one of the pillars of software development for our favorite architecture. On that occasion, 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 celebrating 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 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

Riccardoโ€™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.

Schematics reviewed and published!

Posted on by Communications Team

We have known each other for several years now, working together with supporters who have backed us through the long process of creating notebook prototypes. Over the last eight months, we have focused on developing a desktop version largely redesigned to be immediately functional.

As promised, the sources for our desktop board have been reviewed by NXP. They suggested a few changes, which we have implemented. The review process cost us an additional โ‚ฌ850, but it was worth it: we have improved our schematics and PCB design just in time for the prototypes.

Great news: NXP confirmed we can publish the schematics with an Open Hardware License! We have already uploaded the PDF version to GitLab.

GitLab Repository Powerboard Tyche Desktop Schematics

However, before publishing the raw source files, we need to convert them from the proprietary OrCAD format to KiCad to ensure everyone can use them. We need collaborators to help us bridge this gap.

If you would like to reserve a production desktop board this summer, we need donations to cover โ‚ฌ6,100 for the remaining costs of the PCB design, as well as the expenses associated with prototypes and testing in the coming months. ACube Systems will handle the production because we are a nonprofit organization not allowed to sell physical products.

We are doing what is needed to reach production, despite the obstacles. The difficult part, the uncertainty, is behind us. Now we are missing a very simple ingredient: funds. We need to raise a few thousand euros in a window of 2-3 months. Simple, but not easy.

Join us on this journey!

Donate, tell your friends, and share our project. In order to enjoy the PowerPC motherboard later, we must all work together now by joining the donation campaign in large numbers.

  1. Powerboard Tyche Desktop Electrical Schematics Design
    €3,810.56 donated of €6,250.00 goal

  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.

    €90.00 donated of €12,500.00 goal
Image by Free Photos from Pixabay

Join us in this great opportunity for hands-on learning, creativity, and problem-solving as we design and produce what we desire.

If you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to fill out our survey or contact us.

Troubleshooting the T2080RDB DevKit: stuck in sleep

Posted on by Communications Team

As many of you recall from our post on December 24th, 2025, we hit a significant roadblock with our hardware testing. During the last shipment of one of the DevKits at our disposal, the power supply (which we had already replaced) and the T2080 motherboard sustained damage.

Since then, we have spent quite a few hours on the workbench trying to revive the NXP T2080RDB DevKit, but the situation remains critical.

A photo of the NXP T2080RDB reference DevKit board.

The symptoms

The behavior is consistent but frustrating. We hooked up the serial console, hoping for some life, but unfortunately, no information came out of the serial port. It is complete silence.

As soon as we power up the board, a specific LED close to the CPU turns on. After checking the technical documentation, this indicator seems to signal that the CPU is being kept in a sleep state.

The investigation

So far, none of our attempts have led to a breakthrough or even a solid theory, so we are currently clueless.

To dig deeper, we had to get creative with our quite limited diagnostic tools. We decided to investigate the electronic components and connections on the DevKit board using a piece of classic equipment we had on hand: a very old Tektronix T935A oscilloscope.

Photograph showing a flat signal in the oscilloscope connected to components of the T2080RDB devkit.

For those interested in vintage test gear, the Tektronix T935 is a 35 MHz dual-channel analog scope with a delayed timebase from the T900 series. The specific model we are using, the T935A, is an upgraded version of the standard T935 (and the single-timebase T932).

The “A-series” adds some very useful features that came in handy during our probing:

  • Differential input (A-B)
  • X/Y mode in full sensitivity for both channels
  • DC trigger coupling and composite trigger
  • User-selectable CHOP/ALT mode (Non-A series select this automatically based on sweep rate)

You can read more about this workhorse on the Tektronix Wiki.

What We Tested

We painstakingly probed the board using the T935A. Although it cannot detect the high-frequency bus operation of the CPU or DDR lines, many components can be seen. High-impedance readings allow us to check the pins, and we can verify the power lines.

Beyond signal probing, we also attempted to force the board to boot from different media. We altered the DIP switches to try booting from the SD card, the NAND flash, and the SPI flash. The oscilloscope should show us chip selects of them to show read activity.

We tested the electric signals associated with:

  • The main power lines (fine)
  • The SD card interface (no activity)
  • The NOR and NAND flash interfaces (no activity)
  • The oscillators that provide clock sources for CPU and RAM (fine: 66 MHz and 133 MHz)
  • The reset lines of the T2080 CPU (one good, one shows no activity)
  • The CPU clock input line (dead?)

Photograph taken during the electrical track testing session of some components of the T2080RDB devkit.

Current status and next steps

Unfortunately, even with a detailed signal analysis and configuration changes, the CPU remains stuck in reset. The CPLD attempts to pull the CPU out of reset; however, the clock input is dead, and the HRESET line stays low.

The boot phase fails very early. Perhaps the CPLD did not complete the sequence, or maybe it is corrupted. There may also be a hardware issue. A visual inspection shows nothing apparent; we removed the CPU heatsink. The CPU remains cool, which proves that it is not running.

If anyone has experience with T2080RDB boards getting stuck in a reset state or has suggestions on what to probe next, please reach out!

First PCB Desktop Layout!

Posted on by Communications Team

Today we publish here ( above) an export from PCB design of our PowerPC Desktop motherboard (based on processor NXP T2080) , you can see the motherboard top view with components and connectors, it reflect the progress on pcb design, that is going fast. Before the end of January will be completed !! In January should be defined the costs and timing for the production of the prototypes.

  • The dispositions of components on the board are not final.
  • As requested by our association members there are 4 holes 30-42-60-80 for the left M.2 connector.
  • The two Ethernet are one on top of the other.
  • There is even a digital audio output.
  • There are 3 PCIE connectors: 16x, 4x Open ( with space for 8x and 16x), 1x

In the mean time that is in progress the donation campaign for the schematics design we open now the donation campaign for the PCB design.

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.

Top View Components Deskop Powerboard Tyche
SPECS

Form Factor: Micro ATX

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 1PCIE2 x4 VIDEO Card 2

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

USB: 3.0 and 2.0 ports

STORAGE:

NVM Express (NVMe)M.2 2280 connector2 x SATA21 x SDHC card reader

NETWORK:

2 x Gigabit ethernet RJ-45 connector

Donated: 0.72%
Goal: €12,500.00
0.72% Raised
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4 Donors
79 Days Left
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  • Milestones

    Phase 1: Schematics Design : started on 14.07.2025

    Phase 2: PCB Design : goal 31.01.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    Phase 3: Prototypes Production: goal 01.04.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    Phase 4: Prototypes Tests. : goal 01.06.2026 [depend on donations collected]

    The timing of milestone depend from your donation. Thanks!

  • Headline

    Payment Methods

    Online Donation โ€“ 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 โ€“ 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 โ€“ 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:โ€œPPC notebook donation โ€“ NAME and SURNAMEโ€

    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

    Headline

    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:

    A nonprofit association cannot make commercial products;The association can receive donations, but cannot refund them;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:

    The association can have a particular goal to reach and ask donation to achieve it, but it cannot give back the money (no refunds).Donation must be altruist so, no one will receive something back for their donation.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.

    Headline

    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 Certificaion

    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!!โ€‹

Payments we should do next days:

Schematics Design

Before 31 December we should balance the payment for the schematics design plus 850 euro needed to fill the review questionnaire asked by NXP, So we have summed the 850 euro to the running campaign for the Schematics.

60.96% Raised
€3,810.56 donated of €6,250.00 goal
34 Donors
18 Days Left

PCB Design

We need to pay at beginning of January the 50% of the cost for PCB design that is around 6100 euro, so we have created the PCB design campaign that is 12500 euro ( 10000+VAT+paypal/stripe fees) .

We thanks donors and collaborators that permit us to finance everything realized until now.

We are going faster as promised, to realize a working Open Hardware PowerPC motherboard in few months , that increase rhythms of design and production, costs and ask us to increase even the rhythm of donations…

Donation is a form of collaboration so apart your one shot or recurrent donation that are welcome, we even ask you to spread all over you can our project so more potential collaborators could join our project.

On 12th December NXP confirm us that the review of our source schematics was submitted, they don’t give us any estimation on how much time they take to do the revision and to give us the permission to publish as Open Hardware the schematics source. After we will have the agreement from NXP we will publish the sources as we do usually, as we have done for our Powerboard Tyche Notebook motherboard sources.

Debian 13 installer for PPC64 and powerpc (32bit)

We are very happy that Debian ports team have published a working Debian 13 installer for PPC64 and powerpc so we have tested on PowerBook G4 and IMac G5. Please join us if you want to help on test Debian PPC64 package or if you want to test even Mint PPC

Debian 13 PPC64 on G5
Debian 13 PPC64 on G5

We have published on our forum how to install it.

During the last shipment of one of the Devkit at our disposal, the power supply (already replaced) and the T2080 motherboard were damaged, so we are currently unable to test Debian 13 on it.

Our Devkit T2080 RDB board

If you want to install Debian ppc64/ppc32 on your G5 or G4 you could appreciate our wiki page updated from our collaborators Debian PowerPC Wiki

PCB Design Costs and Timing

Posted on by Communications Team

PCB Design Costs and Timing

In our last post we have announced that we were reviewing the schematics of our Powerboard Tyche Desktop; this careful process involved ACube Systems and one hardware engineer from our team from mid-October to mid-November. So on 10th November we sent our schematics to the PCB design company for quote, that resulted to be around 12500 euros (VAT included). In the next ten days ACube Systems, our actual designer and the PCB design Company will meet to refine every detail like the ATX board dimensions, PCB layers, that should be ten layers.

Schematics Sources Publication

Our hardware designer completed to fill the NXP questionnaire to ease NXP review of Powerboard Tyche Desktop source, so we have forwarded to NXP everything they requested us to allow publishing the parts of our board derived from NXP T2080 RDB Revision F. We asked NXP how much time the review will take, but we don’t have an answer so far. Stay tuned!

After NXP green light we will publish the Powerboard Tyche Desktop schematics on GitLab as usual. Since designer and NXP use Cadence ORCAD, we will convert our motherboard sources to Altium and then KiCad.

Steps before Production

We expect that the PCB design will be completed beginning of February 2026, thus we strongly need donations to pay for the PCB design.

After that, prototypes production could be set up, so signing the manufacturing agreement depends on your donations and on your activity to spread the word about our project and donation campaigns to the world.

If donations keep steady, we then expect to have prototypes in a couple of months (April 2026) so that we can afterward perform hardware tests. If everything goes according to the plan, in June 2026 the hardware test will be successfully completed and we will see booting with Debian PowerPC64 and other GNU/Linux distribution as we are doing with our T2080RDB devkit converted in Desktop from 2016.

DIY PowerPC Desktop derived from NXP devkit – from 2016

Powerboard Tyche Desktop and Notebook

Therefore, we expect ACube System to start boards pre-orders in July 2026 and, in the mean time, we will go back to work on the next milestone for the notebook version: please join our notebook work group if you want!

Join the Software Workgroup for PPC64BE

We invite anyone to support GNU/Linux PowerPC distribution like Debian to improve support on PPC64 big endian architecture.

contact us

Spread the Word

You can take part to the project success by talking about it in the fediverse or in any kind of forum, blog, website, etc… you think it would be relevant on!

60.96% Raised
€3,810.56 donated of €6,250.00 goal
34 Donors
18 Days Left

Linux Day Milano and SFSCON

As usual our volunteers were ambassadors at Free Software events as we have done in the past on Freeplanet event, FOSDEM 2020, Open Power Summit Open Source Summit, etc…. : this fall we participated at Linux Day Milano on October 25th and SFSCON on 6th-7th November, and as usual we got to involve some more people in our activities!

Sfscon – Bolzano – 7th November 2025 – speech Open Hardware PowerPC Powerboard Tyche Desktop

We want to underline the meaning of our open hardware projects

We have vehicles, appliances, phones that cannot be fixed, because their manuals are not available, they are locked behind DRM, or spare parts are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. Even more worrisomely, perfectly fine connected devices become useless bricks just because the original manufacturer do not find them profitable anymore. This creates unbelievable amounts of unnecessary waste.

Nowadays, we see laptops with soldered RAM and GPU, absolutely closed design and mostly running closed OSs. Our design that started in 2017 has 2 RAM slots and a separated MXM video card.

Powerboard Tyche Notebook – MXM video card slot and 2 RAM slot

Our notebook motherboard design fits in an already produced notebook shell and uses a PowerPC processor that can keep up with modern mid-end boards, even though its production started in 2012: a true testament of a good design.

In 2006 we have seen that market of notebook and desktop switched completely to x86 (Apple had used PowerPC CPUs until then), but not because of a technical reason. Some of us were looking to a new PowerPC CPU, and since 2012 Freescale (now NXP) produced the second, more power efficient generation of their PowerPC processors, the QoriQ T-Series, we thought that the T2080 could be used in a notebook, being a good tradeoff between the T10xx lower power line and the T4xxx higher performance line. We then started this project website. It was only a faint idea inside someoneโ€™s head, then it was shared with some others on this website and then became something concrete, with hundreds of donors, a design made, prototypes produced and testedโ€ฆ In 2025 we havenโ€™t got yet a production-ready Open Hardware PowerPC notebook, but we have completed the second schematics design and thanks to YOU TRULY we will make production-ready prototypes real.

Our modern societies need to control and manage the technicalities in order to run: electronics and software is nowadays pervasive to every bit of our life, in our homes, in our workplaces, in our vehicles, in critical infrastructures like roads, bridges (yes!), railways, ports, utilities, healthcare…

Image by Tomasz Mikoล‚ajczyk from Pixabay

That’s why 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.

60.96% Raised
€3,810.56 donated of €6,250.00 goal
34 Donors
18 Days Left