Re: Retiring the sparc32 port

["David Arnold" <davida@pobox.com>]

-->"Andrew" == andrew holway <andrew@moonet.co.uk> writes:

  Andrew> is this hobbyism?

i guess it could be classed as such.

personally, i have several SPARC8 machines which continue to work
exactly as they did when new.  they were adequate for their purpose
then, and continue to be so now.  i'd prefer not to discard and
replace them simply because there's a 'newer model' available.

however, it would prefer that they were kept current with security
patches.  i'd be ok running a 2.4 kernel, or even a 2.2 kernel, but
the way free software works out, you basically need to be running the
current release to get fixes, and by dependency chains, that ends up
meaning the current kernel.

yes, i could replace them with a P3 with 10 times the memory for under
$100, but it strikes me as wasteful.

of course, the counter argument is that it's wasteful to expend the
effort to support a handful of older machines.  and i can see why
people prefer not to do so.  it'd be nice if there were enough folks
wanting to continue to use their older gear to keep it alive, but
perhaps that's not the case.





d