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Re: armel after Stretch (was: Summary of the ARM ports BoF at DC16)



On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 09:21:48PM +0100, Christoph Biedl wrote:
> W. Martin Borgert wrote...
> > The forementioned hardware needs < 0.5 W, the manufacturer even
> > claims 0.18 W. AFAIK, most newer ARM boards that are capable to
> > run Debian need more energy or am I wrong?
> 
> So let me play the devil's advocate another time: My Dockstar runs
> 24/7 and allegedly consumes 5 watts. Replacing it with a board that
> takes a tenth, the electricity bill will be ten euros less. Depending
> on the price for the replacement, that might be worth a thought.
> 
> It certainly is if you're still running a WRT54G at some 15 watts
> where a TP-Link 741 costs less than 20 euros and takes some two or
> three watts.

A rough rule of thumb is that 1 watt-year costs $1, this is approximately
true in most of the world.  US is $1, China/India are at $0.7, Poland is at
$1.2; unfortunately for you Germany is an outlier at $3.  (All of these
prices are for residential customers, taken from three random pages on the
Interwebs.)

Don't forget that your time spent ordering a replacement, configuring it,
replacing the OS, etc, is not free either.

> > (Furthermore, any replacement of hardware has many environmental
> > effects apart of energy consumption: Use of rare materials,
> > production side effects, transport, waste problems, etc.)
> 
> Controlling does not care beyond the bills. And there might be
> transition costs as well (testing new hardware, deployment etc).

If the old box still matches your needs, it's almost never cost-effective to
replace it, unless you manage a fleet of those and can do the replacement in
batches.

> Nevertheless, there is a point where supporting old hardware makes
> little to no sense. Defining that point is hard and includes personals
> preferences as well. Given the arguments in this thread I'm less sure
> armel already is at that point but it surely will come.

Yeah, the time of volunteers (porters) is not free either.  As the ARM team
decided they don't want to do the work, and no one else stepped up, you have five
more years of support for that armel box.  Ie, there's no rush to replace it,
it's pretty likely it will stop being adequate for your needs before then,
and if not, well, assume the box will sort-of break by then.  Losing
security support is a nice sort of failure as you're warned years in
advance.


Meow!
-- 
u-boot problems can be solved with the help of your old SCSI manuals, the
parts that deal with goat termination.  You need a black-handled knife, and
an appropriate set of candles (number and color matters).  Or was it a
silver-handled knife?  Crap, need to look that up.


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