Re: lenny+1 and the future of the alpha port?
Hi Gary,
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 06:00:34AM -0500, Gary Lee Phillips wrote:
> As has already been pointed out, the diversity of the Alpha hardware and
> machine code instruction set is a significant security advantage especially
> for a firewall, mail host, or web server where attacks are more likely to
> occur. This can help accrue benefits to Linux as a whole. As the active
> market share of Linux installations continues to increase, which seems
> likely to happen, hackers will turn more focus toward "breaking" Linux
> security. The existence of diverse hardware with the same operating system
> and management tools is a major advantage against this problem, and I for
> one will hate to see the Alpha go. What can take its place? Now that Apple
> has moved to Intel style processors, there seems to be no alternative line
> of evolution left.
Well, sparc still exists; and ARM seems to be stepping up as the major
contender for non-x86 CPUs[1] as the "embedded" label is applied to
ever-beefier systems.
But in terms of the market, Alpha already lost years ago when Compaq
vivisected that part of DEC...
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
[1] Which doesn't imply non-Intel!
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