Re: The State of Alpha Linux
On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 08:25:38AM -0500, Brian Szymanski wrote:
> Matt Turner wrote:
> > > Right. But for some mysterious reasons, Alphas are still very expensive and
> > > if you put one on ebay, you will sell it.
> >
> > I attribute this to sellers who try to hit the lottery. That is, they
> > hope that a corporate server with no back up fails and someone with
> > access to the company's expense account spends 7000 GBP (as I was
> > recently quoted for an ES47) to get a replacement immediately.
> >
> >
> I do feel the need to point out that this is not always the case - you
> can also find some great deals. Evidence the DS-20L I got on ebay for
> $100 (it's no ES47, but it's nice nonetheless!) -- you just need a
> little - or a lot - of patience.
Heh! Having a "benefactor" is also useful. I got my PWS 433au from a
developer friend who had more need of a cantilever shelf for his rack
than the Alpha. So, $29 and a 45-minute drive out to his remote site
later, and I became the proud owner of a lightly-used $10,000 (according
to the original invoice) system, including installation media and
licensing for DEC UNIX.
What is the system being used for these days? It's the reliable
experimental system in my menagerie... Trying out new kernel.org kernels
generally happens first on the Alpha. It's also my IPv6 gateway. I do
masochistic things like run FreeNX on it (using it from my day job as I
type this), and am generally interested in anything that improves the
usability/viability of the platform for "modern" purposes. The reason
I scrapped DEC UNIX for Linux in the first place was that I wanted a
modern web browser *with* Java support. The latest firefox beta works
just fine, and the Java support is sufficient for the few web sites I
visit that require it.
As far as support for the platform, I consider myself "erratic" in terms
of availability. Real life intrudes all too frequently :-(. However, I
*do* seem to find the time to investigate and fix bugs that affect me
personally. Odd thing, that :-).
--
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Bob Tracy | "I was a beta tester for dirt. They never did
rct@frus.com | get all the bugs out." - Steve McGrew on /.
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