Re: Retiring the sparc32 port

["andrew holway" <andrew@moonet.co.uk>]

Its only wasteful if they end up in a landfill. If they could be
recycled? Another important factor to consider is power consumption.
If you have several V8's (circa early 90's?) running I shudder think
how much juice they draw.

That is the true waste.

Ask yourself, what is the carbon footprint of my computing platforms?
Old gear becomes redundant not only because of processing/space but
also processing/power consumption.

"Oh I can afford it" just isn't a valid excuse any more. Least not in
the UK, were about to start putting SUV drivers up against the wall.
:-)

Andy

On 18/07/07, David Arnold <davida@pobox.com> wrote:
> -->"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