Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead

Hello Gerhard!

On 1/11/21 4:04 PM, Gerhard Pircher wrote:

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* powerpc/cell: I'm the maintainer and I promised to send a patch to remove it.
   it's in my backlog but I will get to it. This is separate from PS3,
   which is actively maintained and used; spufs will move to ps3
* powerpc/chrp (32-bit rs6000, pegasos2): last updated in 2009

I'm still using this. Please keep it.

I can also confirm that Pegasos2 users in the Amiga scene are running Linux
(Debian) on these machines.

Thanks for raising your voice. It's nice and reliable hardware after all and
still fast enough to run a recent version of Debian unstable with a lean
desktop such as XFCE or MATE.
 

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* powerpc/amigaone: last updated in 2009

I still have 2 of the 3 types of the first generation AmigaOne machines (not
to be confused with the newer AmigaOne X1000 and X5000 machines based on
PASemi and P5020 CPUs) working here. A third machine needs a repair of the
G4 CPU module (replacement parts already available).

Cool.

I have to admit however that I yet have to setup an environment that allows
me to regularly test new Linux kernel versions on these machines. Especially
because there are not many Linux users for these machines - which is likely
due to the fact that no distribution officially supports these machines out
of the box (the Pegasos2 platform had more luck here). Inputs on how to
automate tests would therefore be very welcome!

Are you on the debian-powerpc mailing list? If not, please subscribe and post
your issues there:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/

Given however that the Debian PowerPC port has a proper maintainer again
(kudos to Adrian!) and there is also another new PowerPC distro (Void Linux),
I would like to ask for a period of grace. After all this is just a hobby
project for me, so keeping up with the pace of the Linux development isn't
always that easy (and no, work on this did not stop in 2009, but shifted more
towards distro support since then).

Yeah, I have the same impression that's the strong commercial interest pushes
hobbyist use of the Linux kernel a bit down. A lot of these changes feel like
they're motivated by corporate decisions.

There has to be a healthy balance between hobbyist and commercial use. I understand
that from a commercial point of view, it doesn't make much sense to run Linux
on a 30-year-old computer. But it's a hobbyist project for many people and hacking
Linux stuff for these old machines has a very entertaining and educational factor.

Plus, as Thomas Bogendoerfer already mentioned in this thread, most of the old ports
run just fine. I have an Alpha XP-1000 building Debian packages for the Debian
Alpha port and it runs 24/7 without a hick and is regularly kept up-to-date with
dist-upgrades.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913