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Home▸ Forums▸ 68kMLA▸ How much can I get for my G5? — #28
Post #28 by ClassicHasClass
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryPowerPC
Post DateWed, 18 Nov 2009 - 14:35
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/how-much-can-i-get-for-my-g5.18519/
Post
I don't think it would be too hard to keep a PPC build of Camino and/or Firefox going, assuming they don't start loading it up with x86 assembly or something. As long as they don't use any Snow Leopard specific features. Even if they went Leopard only (since who uses Tiger on Intel Macs still?) - then that still keeps it running on G4s and G5s.
I'm worried they're going to take a page from Google (the company I love to hate these days) and start using architecture-specific JavaScript JITs like V8, which currently only runs on x86 and ARM because -- supplies! -- no one has done the work to convert to POWER opcodes. Unfortunately, it's the next logical step.

Mozilla has had some internal discussions about causing the runtime to require some of 10.5's built-in APIs such as Core Data. That will hurt, because I need to use some Classic apps I have no substitute for (and I like OS 9), so I'm on 10.4 on my PowerPCs forever. What may have to happen is, like Classilla, I start backporting later code from "Gecko 2.0" or whatever to the Gecko 1.9.x that still runs on 10.4. Fortunately Firefox 3.6/Gecko 1.9.2 still does (I have to investigate Gecko 1.9.3).

mp.ls