GCC 3.0.3 has been released. It is above all a bugfix release and does include several fixes on the PowerPC architecture. So if you have experienced problems with prior 3.x gcc versions (which wouldn't suprise anyone), you may give this release a try.

More info .

Looks like folks are starting to make some progress on using the iPod in .

I read another report in a magazine of a $39 Windoze app that will be able to access the iPod, where they voiced concerns as to whether Apple would be able to meet the demand. Better grab one while you can!

Stimuli has posted a nice tutorial on how to quickly create a .ppc.rpm program package from any src.rpm file in 3 simple steps. You can find it here.

If you ever wanted to know in simple words how the default Linux file system, ext2 works, is for you.

According to the , XFree 4.2.0 seems to be finished. The has not been updated yet and the only way to get it at the moment seems to be over the CVS.

Expect the official release to be out shortly.

World Crafter is being developed on the Linux / Power PC platform, but also distributed on Sparc and Intel. It is a real-time strategy game which has a very unique and "different" interface. developement binaries available for download. All development has been done on a PowerMac 8500 running YellowDog 2.2. Main website is

GCC 3.0.4 has been released. Improvements include support for the Xtensa processor, ELF x86 NetBSD, and compiling the PPC Linux kernel as well as better debugging output from functions that have multiple source files, a fix for Fortran, fixes to the exception handling runtime, fixes for bad code generation in C++, a fix for shared library generation under AIX 4.3, and documentation updates. See details at and check your local .

Ampro Computers Inc. today unveiled the latest member of its 100 x 145 mm EnCore single-board computer (SBC) module family, this one based on Motorola's 300MHz MPC8245 PowerPC processor. With the addition of PowerPC, the five members of the EnCore family now encompass three popular microprocessor architectures: PowerPC, MIPS, and x86. The EnCore modules are supplied with board support packages that make it easy to use them in embedded systems under both Linux and VxWorks. ...

Pittsburgh, March 6 -- TimeSys Corporation, a pioneer and leader in Embedded Linux and Java(TM) development technologies, today announced that it has extended support of its embedded Linux solution for the PowerPC family of processor architectures with the release of a board support package (BSP) for Embedded Planet's PowerPC-based EP8260. The first of a number of upcoming turnkey solutions from TimeSys and Embedded Planet, the EP8260 coupled with TimeSys Linux offers embedded engineers a low-cost, reliable and flexible "out-of-the-box" solution for the development of embedded systems. Read on...

linux.org.mt has a very interesting on how to write a simple cross-platform Linux installer. This could be an interesting way to provide a simpler interface to the various steps one has to do now to install a program from sources.

Eyetech Ltd, a UK based company now has the AmigaOneG3SE for prerelease to developers. The developers prerelease board comes with a TurboLinux PPC CD. While this system is targetted at Amiga owners wanting new hardware, there's no reason for anyone needing a good PPC solution for Linux can't get their hands on one. You've got until the 24th of March if you want a prerelease board (note that the only difference between it and the final board is that the ROM chip in the final board will be an AmigaOS4 ROM where as it's an OpenPPC BIOS in the developers board). ...

PenguinPPC: Klaus Halfmann has updated the to version 1.0.4. THese utilities can read files from HFS+ partitions and can even do a basic filesystem check. New is built-in partition support which is handy for trying to access HFS+ formatted disks from non-ppclinux systems.

PenguinPPC has added a for the POP open source PPC motherboards. The page lists the available boards and gives instructions on how to make Linux run on them.

Pittsburgh, PA - April 2, 2002 -- TimeSys Corporation, a pioneer and leader in Embedded Linux and Java development technologies, today that it has extended support of its embedded Linux solution for the PowerPC family of processor architectures with the release of a board support package (BSP) for Embedded Planet's PowerPC-based RPX Lite 823 single board computer (SBC) based on the Motorola PowerPC 823e processor. A similiar was made yesterday for the PowerPC 860.

TimeSys Corporation today announced embedded Linux support for Motorola's MVME2433-3 and MVME5100-0131 single board computers (SBC) built on the PowerPC 750 processor. Embedded systems developers looking for a Linux solution for these PowerPC 750-based VME boards will be able to download a complete, certified solution beginning April 26. ...

The PHP Group is happy to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.2.0, the latest version of the widely-used, general-purpose scripting language that is especially well-suited for Web development.

This latest release contains over one hundred changes, bug fixes and improvements over the previous release, PHP 4.1.2. Among the highlights are experimental support for Apache 2, cleanups in variable handling and overhauls of various PHP components, including the domxml, posix, sockets and iconv extensions. More info can be found .

The long awaited 3.1 version of gcc, the GNU Compiler Collection, is now available. This version should add to stability on PPC, noticably reduce the size of binaries, add PPC64 and preliminary Altivec support. You can find more info .

With two posts on the LinuxPPC development mailing lists, referenced by PenguinPPC.org, two major achievements have been announced. First, it seems like sound recording with recent machines is now possible using the latest CVS ALSA drivers (...). Second step, the 2.4.x Linux kernel seems to be working on TerraSoft's BriQ now, so far limited to be used with 2.2.x kernels (...)

A new iPod on Linux has been created on SourceForge. The project aims at developping a complete C application to handle the iPod under Linux. More precisely, it intends to coordinate the existing community effort towards that goal. Like all of these projects, it currently fails at the missing HFS+ write support in Linux.

The easy XF86Config file generator Xeasyconf has been updated to version 0.1.2. Fixes include:
- (0.1.2) Added truetype font path and any detected PS/2 now gets set to IMPS/2 (thanks daybird)
- (0.1.1) If mousteype was detected as "auto" was not replaced with correctly formatted line (thanks eddieb)
Details and sources at the .

DENX Software Engineering announces the first release of a new Embedded Linux Development Kit (ELDK).

This version of ELDK runs on x86/Linux, x86/FreeBSD and on SPARC/Solaris host operating systems and supports a wide range of PowerPC target processors (8xx, 82xx, 7xx, 74xx, 4xx). It consists of: (Read on...)

Adventures in Linux programming is a completely dedicated to programming on Linux and features several tutorials, course notes and a lot more. It's certainly worth a look if you want to get into Linux programming.

If you are interested in learning assembler for the PowerPC, then over at IBM's developerworks site will be of interest to you.

GCC 3.2 has been released, you can find the announcement .

The Tcl Core Team announced the 8.4.0 releases of the Tcl scripting language and the Tk toolkit. This is the first stable release of Tcl/Tk 8.4.

Tcl/Tk 8.4.0 are freely available in open source from the Tcl Developer Xchange web site at

This web page also contains additional information about the releases, including new features and notes about installing and compiling the releases.

Tulsa, OK -- Farpointer Technologies today announced new automated session management for the Apache server. The company's iConductor server module interacts with HTML files to automatically implement session tracking via any URL. In addition, iConductor manages simple key/values as well as complex documents such as Web Services requests and replies. These features save a significant amount of developer time in building Internet-based applications.

If you suddenly want to shrink your HFS(+) partition, let's say to install a GNU/Linux system, you might be interrested by a patch for GNU Parted 1.6.5 which will allow it to do that.