MintPPC

It is now possible to install Gnumeric, a spreadsheat program, in MintPPC64. It wasn’t possible for many many years. The fix was easy. I uploaded the fix to the goffice Gnome team and to goffice Debian.

This year saw the release of various new components of the LXDE desktop, as used in MintPPC.

See here for an update of all new components.

What’s New in Debian 13

• Official support for RISC-V (64-bit riscv64), a major architecture milestone
• Enhanced security through ROP and COP/JOP hardening on both amd64 and arm64 (Intel CET and ARM PAC/BTI support)
• HTTP Boot support in Debian Installer and Live images for UEFI/U-Boot systems
• Upgraded software stack: GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6, Linux kernel 6.12 LTS, GCC 14.2, Python 3.13, and more

Official announcement

Wiki

ArcticFox has been updated to 46.1 in MintPPC32. There are no ppc64 builds for SeaLion and ArcticFox lately.

As I have Linux Mint running bare metal on my Mac Mini M1, I can experiment to build images using the fast processor. At the moment I am playing around with live-build, a Debian tool to create live systems. At the end of the day, after trying a couple of configuations and building some broken package, I was able to produce a live system ISO of Linux Mint arm64. The ISO boots straight into Linux Mint, just like the Linux Mint x86-64 ISO of the Linux Mint team. The installer which is created does not yet work, although I have an idea how to fix that. If this works, I can provide a Debian style Live image which boots into Linux Mint and can install the same desktop from that image by copying the live system to the disk. This is different from the usual method which is used by debian-installer. Normally, packages from the medium or network are installed.

A working NETINST ISO is available. The image is able to install Linux Mint Debian Edition in a virtual machine via the net. It has been tested in Parallels and works very fast.

Since recently also a Live Image is available, which is able to install Linux Mint arm64 from a live system or with Debian-installer from the boot menu.

A dedicated page was added to the menu on the top of the website. The Linux Mint arm64 page is the place to go to for information about Linux Mint arm64.

Hi guys, I was just able to install Debian bare metal on my Mac Mini M1. I then converted it into a Linux Mint Debian Edition! Look at the picture! This is probably the first Linux Mint arm64 running bare metal on a silicon Mac.

It is unbelievable how fast this machine is under Mint! I installed Mint with all dependencies from a console type Debian installation in like a minute!

It is not yet possible to install such a system automatically, as Debian does not yet give support officially using their debian-installer. At the moment one can only install Linux Mint on Apple silicon by hand.

Recently I ported Linux Mint Xia, running in a Debian trixie base, to arm64. I am working on a solution to get Linux Mint running in a VM like Parallels and UTM on silicon macs with almost native speed. A test version is ready and being tested. In the future, I will sell disk images for Parallels and UTM, maybe also VMWARE. These images will contain Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 (Gigi). Stay tuned for this.

Link to Linux Mint arm64 page

For some reason, my repository pages are now redirected to ssl, which will lead to a failure in automated installations. I don’t know how to fix this at the moment. Please install MintPPC manually.

It is very likely that my hosting provider now redirects all traffic via ssl. Previously, the repo pages were set to not use https by me with a .htaccess file in the root of these repo pages. This was working fine until a week ago the provider changed the settings. If someone here reading this willing to help, he/she could offer web space via http and ftp so I can host the repo somewhere else. I cannot change these settings.

Update 13 July 2025
I think I found a solution. The automated installations might just work again. If it will, the red header in the top of this website will turn green again…
On another note, my provider turned back the settings. The repo folders are done over plain http again.

Please be aware that during a next upgrade in your system, Debian tries to install a new version of Grub. The installation of Grub-ieee1275 will lead to a corrupted boot partition. Immediately after installation make sure you have hfsprogs installed, if not:
sudo apt install hfsprogs
Then repair the boot partition:
sudo fsck.hfs /dev/sda2
See here.

If you don’t repair your boot partition, you risk that your MintPPC system won’t be able to boot anymore.

Update 21 June: Another upgrade installed a new /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so messing up X. I had to rename it again into libglamoregl.so.bak.

As of today, users of MintPPC can install Minitube, a small standalone program to watch youtube videos without the need of flash. I built a 32 and 64 bits version of this program and they are in the wicknix and xeno74 repos. For more information about this program look here.