Wasn't PowerPC always able to switch between little-endian and big-endian at boot? Maybe they migrated that capability to POWER.

(It's been a long time since I last typed "PowerPC", gave me a strange feeling of nostalgia...)

POWER architecture can switch between BE/LE via a special purpose register (SPR). This can even be done to support mixing BE/LE threads on the core. The software complexity of managing that, though, has made them decide to enable the entire OS as BE or LE. One cool thing is that the support will be extended so that the chips can support running either BE or LE guest VMs natively.

edit: Straight from IBM https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/fe313521-...

Most of them, although not the Apple G5s which are BE only.

Power has been little endian for a while. No one bothered to tell the software guys to write a little endian OS and tools for it....

My point is that little-endian Ubuntu is now available.

Yes, and IBM is pushing this (plus the v2 ABI which is a bit more like x86 and simplified in some small ways).

As far as I'm aware, IBM intend on maintaining both big and little endian Linux ports (and toolchains).

I had no idea. Haven't looked it since many years ago.

Well, heck, that's great then.