Warning, long reply, may need coffee :-)...
I know Debian 7 is unsupported on Sparc and that bugs won't be fixed,
but I don't care. Once the OS is installed and stable, I really don't
need or expect support or patches. Apart from adding a few packages,
nothing is likely to change. All i'm looking for is a stable
OS to run on Sparc h/w, with a gui. I would be quite happy with Sol
10, but Oracle support licenses are too expensive.
Old it may be, but even Squeeze is pretty stable. Just wanted to try
out a later version and afaics, 7.10 was the last supported stable
release. Also sans systemd. I know there are different priorities
for developers and maybe this is the wrong place to ask, but 7.10.0
must have been tested at some stage and really would like to have
it working for evaluation, without being sidetracked into other areas
i'm probably not ready for at this stage.
Ok, one reason for looking at older versions is that i'm not happy
about the current Linux direction. As an engineer, efficiency is
important and mainstream Linux becomes ever more complex and
interdependent. Debian has been the favourite Linux for
years, but the last straw was the systemd saga. If they wanted
a good model for system service management, they could have done a
lot worse than look at the Solaris svcadm, svcs etc, which in the
main, coexists with the existing OS functionality, rather than
making everything else, including non system stuff like gdm,
subservient to it. It's what dec used to call "layered software".
svcadm etc is also transparently easy to use and retains most of
the underlying init and logging structure that we are all familiar
with.
Oracle do have a free Linux / Sparc, but it's still a reference level
design and correct me if wrong, nothing seems to have happened for
some time. Not clear if they are really serious about it. Really
good if they are and it would be a valuable contribution to the
rapidly diminishing Sparc OS gene pool. Hardware is useless without
an OS and it's good to have choices.
Debian may not need the older machines, but have just given a couple of
V240's + configuration help to a FreeBSD developer. Afaics, they have
no plans to drop support for any 64 bit Sparc. Understand that you
have to concentrate efforts with limited resources, but if it doesn't
run on generic 64 bit Sparc, what's the point, unless you are
just aiming at commercial users ?. Heck, i'm still looking for a cheap
M3000 on fleabay, but later machines (ie: supported by Oracle) are
still very expensive. V series machines are more than adequate
for things like software development and are economical or free for
the average enthusiast / hacker. As for reliability, meh. I've had
uptimes of years from U and V class h/w, many of which are still less
than 10 years old. Sun built h/w from that period is very reliable,
with properly designed ventilation and conservative component rating.
They may or may not burn in the boards these days, but far better than
you get from the average cheap pc.
Anyway, thanks for putting up with the post. So how do I get the 7.10
issue resolved and replies to the list to thread properly ?. I see a
mirror of this list on nntp.aioe.org, but seems read only. Is that
correct ?...
Regards & Thanks,
Chris