Re: Is a Raptor Blackbird (or other Power machine) a good general-purpose desktop?
On 03/22/23 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
thus we (RED, Libre-SOC) are "on the clock" with a limited
window of opportunity to stop that from happening.
You mean devs dropping certain architectures?
IMHO when there are no systems in numbers on the market, support is
going to be like those numbers. And I'm thinking both a) numbers in sold
units as in b) money made (i.e. expensive systems, less sold).
Why did the Raspberry Pi get so much support, why is everything so well
developed for it? Numbers...
Why are expensive server systems well supported? Because they are
expensive...
But, for the purpose of "Linux on the deskop" the former (large numbers
as in sold units) would be preferred, because it means more developers
in the (free) community, thus more software ported and hopefully
everything runs (like we see on the RaspPi).
there are additional complications: IBM signed a non-compete
agreement over 12 years ago with Motorola to stay out of
the desktop market and then the *entire Motorola team* was
killed when that Malay Air passenger plane was shot down.
Well, I'm not surprised, considering that it's IBM we're talking about.
It's this firm that by accident created the PC platform, was then caught
unprepared and surprised by its own success and lost the whole marked
share in the process...
Sorry to hear the Motorola story. Didn't know...
now, as part of the effort to fix the issues caused by developers
....
I'm just a user. I don't develop. I bought the Steam Deck because I like
gaming and I'm fascinated by the idea to have a portable Linux desktop
computer in my hands that is in some regard equally capable as my
Windows desktop, while being portable. This is great! I had to have it,
even though I'm not a handheld gamer. I prefer keyboard and mouse, and,
let's face it, that would pervert the idea of the Steam Deck. But I also
got the dock, so I could use it as my desktop replacement.
I'm impressed at a) the price, b) the performance (which is almost as
good as my ~2000$ desktop system), and c) about the fact that Valve
decided to use Arch Linux. Arch is pretty bad-ass (like Gentoo).
So, that said: I really don't care about the details. VSX? Yeah, heard
of it. 950 instructions? And there I was thinking RISC means "reduced"...
FGPA? Heard of it, but don't know what to do with it.
When competitive alternative open Linux hardware is presented, whether
it will be Power/PowerPC, RISC-V, Arm or whatever (I really don't care),
that is very very well supported in Linux, for the desktop (!), I will
be among the first ones to buy it. Just like the Steam Deck.
For the openness (freely available firmware, including the possibility
to modify the source code yourself) I'd be happy to pay the extra
Dollars... (My desktop with a gaming graphics card did cost around
2000$, excluding keyboard/mouse and display. If it were open, I'd be
happy to pay 3000 $, but if that also means that Linux has problems here
and there, why should I? A higher price doesn't help when software
doesn't actually run...)
As long as my laptops and desktops are way better of with closed
firmware blobs here and there, I'll have to take that (bitter) pill. For
one very pragmatic reason: Linux and the software I use simply works.
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