Comment Re:Won't everything need to be recompiled? (Score 2) 85
Actually, POWER8 supports both big and little endian, and you can go out to Canonical's site and (as of 14.04) and get the LE version of Ubuntu for POWER8. You can read about that below. Quoting the article:
Why is Linux on Power transitioning from big endian to little endian?
The Power architecture is bi-endian in that it supports accessing data in both little endian and big endian modes. Although Power already has Linux distributions and supporting applications that run in big endian mode, the Linux application ecosystem for x86 platforms is much larger and Linux on x86 uses little endian mode. Numerous clients, software partners, and IBM’s own software developers have told us that porting their software to Power becomes simpler if the Linux environment on Power supports little endian mode, more closely matching the environment provided by Linux on x86. This new level of support will lower the barrier to entry for porting Linux on x86 software to Linux on Power.