Re: Hows Alphadebian doing?
On Fri, Jan 01, 1999 at 02:24:51PM +0100, Gerhard Poul wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > I just installed Debian 2 weeks ago on my AlphaStation 200 4/233 using
> > ARC. I found it to be quite nice! A few problems, such as:
>
> 1.) The time is wrong
> 2.) The installation is much too difficult
> 3.) There are no CDs (except the ones we made here with our own script)
>
There has been no official release for Debian GNU/Linux Alpha port yet. The
Alpha port is currently frozen and is planned to be released with Slink (Debian
2.1). Therefore there are no official cd's available yet. The same applies to
installation.
> > I have not found a problem yet. You can tell that care was taken in
> > making the packages.
>
> yes... the packages seem to be good... but I don't see any maintainers here
> which are working on new packages or who are discussing something... ???!!
>
> Seems to me like a really dead distribution... that's one of the main
> problems I have...
>
I hope you don't judge our effort on the quantity of mail on the mailing list.
Recently there has been a discussion on -devel about the remaining packages
that have to be done for Alpha. Almost all packages for main are available.
Those that aren't are programs that depend on e.g. architecture differences
(depends on ELF32 e.g. or uses assembler routines) or have to be done.
You can see the precise explanation of Paul Slootman on the -devel
mail-archives.
In contrib and non-free a fair amount of programs is just not available
for similar reasons. Netscape 3 and 4.0x, programs that are static and/or
dynamically linked against Motif but also binaries that are platform specific
like rar. Those are hard/impossible to port!
> And we already wrote a script to create alpha CDs... But we only have
> alphapc 164sx with ARC consoles and so we would need help for building
> others... But nobody seems to be interested in these things.. (but this has
> already been discussed on #debian, debian-devel and debian-cd)
>
Did you mention this here or to Loic Prylli <lprylli@graville.fdn.fr>? Maybe
you can send him a mail about those scripts.
> > I have been using it to burn audio CD's with cdrecord and wav2cdr with no
> > problem, when I used RedHat the same source it used to give unaligned
> > traps all the time.
>
> unaligned traps aren't bad... (!)
>
> And I don't think that it was the same source because if it's the same
> source there would be unaligned traps... maybe the debian kernels don't tell
> the user about unaligned traps... but they happen if it's the same source!
>
Traps are logged. Part of a good port for a package is to check for alignment
errors and solve them. This is why porting takes time and effort.
> > complete. I'll be happy to write the docs for installing to an
> > AlphaStation 200 4/233 w/ ARC if no one has done it yet, just send me the
> > guidelines on how you want it written (I seen a few posts back, but I
> > forgot who was managing it).
>
> I think there are many people who want to help but there doesn't seem to be
> any development... where are the developers??? discussions??
>
> There isn't much traffic on this mailing list... :-(((
>
> And I'm really thinking about using NetBSD on my alpha because I don't see
> any development on this parts... :-(((
>
I hope you reconsider the jump. If you think there is to little traffic on
this list, maybe you can fire it up with some constructive suggestions to make
the Alpha port better!
> (I really want to use Linux but not a dead-end operating system :(( )
>
Neither do I :)
B.
--
B. Warmerdam GNU/Debian Linux
bartw@xs4all.nl, bartw@debian.org (Keyid: 10A0FDD1) ----------------
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