Void Linux, a release distribution we covered earlier, is known for its XBPS package manager and interesting design decisions, such as using the Runit init system and supporting the Musl C library, recently worked to improve its support for POWER CPU architecture.
Daniel Kolesa, who works as the lead maintainer for Void Linux’s POWER port, spoke at FOSDEM 2021 earlier this month about their improvements to IBM POWER / OpenPOWER hardware.
Void Linux for POWER worked on a small 32-bit endian support to complement the existing 64-bit endow POWER support, as well as to already support 32-bit and 64-bit POWER in large endian mode. Void Linux also ported LibreSSL patches to provide faster encryption performance on POWER, getting features like Google Chromium on POWER in their archive, accepting Electron applications on POWER, and also getting graphics driver support AMD Radeon running on POWER.
Void Linux on POWER was originally brought to PPC64LE on Raptor Talos II Lite hardware and has seen a lot of work over the years. There have also been OpenJDK Java enhancements, cross-tool chain management enhancements, and more. For those with a POWER system, such as the wonderful POWER9 hardware from Raptor Computing Systems, the latest Linux Void seems to be a decent competitor if it wants a good POWER distribution.
For more details about Void Linux on POWER, see Daniel’s PDF slideshow from the FOSDEM virtual conference, as well as the WebM / VP9 session recording.