Will 10.4Fx run on a Power system

Dwight's Avatar

Dwight

05 Jan, 2015 02:20 AM

Trying to find a newer version of firefox that will run on my IBM pSeries systems running AIX 5.3 and 7.1.
The version I am using is firefox 3.6.28 and I am having a lot of trouble accessing may sites on the WWW.
I am not familiar with Apple G3, G4 or G5 systems. I gather they use the PowerPC microprocessor.
My systems use the Power 4 and Power 6 microprocessor that supports the common instruction set.
I think that means that they will run code compiled for the PowerPC.
Any chance 10.4F will work on my system?
(Mozilla has also dropped support for all UNIX systems..... Oracle/Sun Solaris, HP HP/UX and IBM AIX.)
Hope any response to my question will be emailed to me at the above address. Other wise I am not
sure where to go to read the response.
Appreciate any help I can get..... Not getting any from mozilla and IBM is non committal about
any future ports of firefox to AIX.
Like you mentioned about Apple legacy software I also have legacy software that will only run on AIX and am stuck.....>15 years of
effort on IBM Power series systems. Changing platforms will not be easy if an all possible.

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Cameron Kaiser on 05 Jan, 2015 02:31 AM

    Cameron Kaiser's Avatar

    As the owner of an Apple Network Server (4.1) and a POWER6 (6.1), I empathize, but unfortunately TenFourFox is not compatible with AIX. Although the Apple Power Macs use the same instruction set (and even the same ABI -- AIX and Mac OS X are both PowerOpen-based), TenFourFox depends on core libraries of Mac OS X to function.

    There are various emulators that can allow you to boot OS X in a virtual machine, and these may -- may -- work on AIX. I haven't tried them myself, but PearPC comes to mind. For this to function you would need to build PearPC, install OS X (at least 10.4.11), and install TenFourFox. PearPC is a true emulator, not a virtualized CPU, however, so performance would be at best pedestrian and I can't guarantee it would even work at all.

    Although I have AIX systems of my own, I don't have a need to run Firefox on them, so this is not something I'm likely to work on myself. Good luck; I hope this gave you an idea of where to start.
    Mozilla still supports Linux, and there are maintained big-endian builds of Firefox to Linux and NetBSD. IBM does support Linux on many pSeries platforms and that might be a consideration as well.

  2. 2 Posted by Dwight on 06 Jan, 2015 02:03 AM

    Dwight's Avatar























    :-(
    :-(


    pre { width: 92%; margin: 10px 2%; padding: 5px 2%; background: #efefef; border: 1px solid #d6d6d6 } blockquote { margin-left: 0; padding-left: 1em; border-left: 5px solid #ccc; }

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    From: Cameron Kaiser (Support staff)

    As the owner of an Apple Network Server (4.1) and a POWER6 (6.1), I empathize, but unfortunately not directly. Although the Apple Power Macs use the same instruction set (and even the same ABI -- AIX and Mac OS X are both PowerOpen-based), TenFourFox depends on core libraries of Mac OS X to function.

    There are various emulators that can allow you to boot OS X in a virtual machine, and these may -- may -- work on AIX. I haven't tried them myself, but PearPC comes to mind. For this to function you would need to build PearPC, install OS X (at least 10.4.11), and install TenFourFox. PearPC is a true emulator, not a virtualized CPU, however, so performance would be at best pedestrian and I can't guarantee it would even work at all.

    Although I have AIX systems of my own, I don't have a need to run Firefox on them, so this is not something I'm likely to work on myself. Good luck; I hope this gave you an idea of where to start.
    Mozilla still supports Linux, and there are maintained big-endian builds of Firefox to Linux and NetBSD. IBM does support Linux on many pSeries platforms and that might be a consideration as well.

    On Mon, Jan 05 at 02:20 AM, Dwight wrote:

    Trying to find a newer version of firefox that will run on my IBM pSeries systems running AIX 5.3 and 7.1.
    The version I am using is firefox 3.6.28 and I am having a lot of trouble accessing may sites on the WWW.
    I am not familiar with Apple G3, G4 or G5 systems. I gather they use the PowerPC microprocessor.
    My systems use the Power 4 and Power 6 microprocessor that supports the common instruction set.
    I think that means that they will run code compiled for the PowerPC.
    Any chance 10.4F will work on my system?
    (Mozilla has also dropped support for all UNIX systems..... Oracle/Sun Solaris, HP HP/UX and IBM AIX.)
    Hope any response to my question will be emailed to me at the above address. Other wise I am not
    sure where to go to read the response.
    Appreciate any help I can get..... Not getting any from mozilla and IBM is non committal about
    any future ports of firefox to AIX.
    Like you mentioned about Apple legacy software I also have legacy software that will only run on AIX and am stuck.....>15 years of
    effort on IBM Power series systems. Changing platforms will not be easy if an all possible.

    Having trouble reading this? View this discussion online: Will 10.4Fx run on a Power system.

    Reply with #ignore to stop receiving notifications for this discussion.


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