Author: Didier Kryn Date: To: dng Subject: Re: [DNG] Used *and* free hardware
Le 13/03/2018 à 02:29, Steve Litt a écrit : > On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 17:37:56 -0700
> Rick Moen <rick@???> wrote:
>
>> Quoting Luciano Mannucci (luciano@???):
>>
>>> Hmm, I guess that a couple of virtual machines under KVM/Qemu on an
>>> IBM S802L Power8 are'nt enough... (I could provide them :)
>>> I have an old G4 MacBook that I should check to see if it is still
>>> working...
>> I have an antique G3 Macbook, so I'm one up on you, there. ;-> It
>> still functions, for long-ago values of 'function'.
>>
>> Sometimes, people ask me what it runs, and the usual answer is 'It
>> doesn't run anything, exactly; it walks Debian briskly.'
>>
>> Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense to let this stuff go.
>> IMO, Devuan has enough to handle without delving into specialty
>> hardware. (Just my two zorkmids and change. Your Views May
>> Differ.{tm})
> There are a couple kinds of specialty hardware:
>
> 1) Antiquated stuff
>
> 2) Newish stuff that just might make it
>
> Examples of #1 are VAX, PowerPC, Sun hardware. Examples of #2 are
> various Raspberry Pi's, Beaglebone, various modern SOC's.
>
> IMHO #1 is a waste of time, just like Rick said. #2 might be a good
> thing, so as to get a sans-systemd distro onto tiny computers and not
> forfeit to Debian's specialty OS.
Powerpc isn't antique at all. The architecture is extremely modern,
compared to Intel's and its clones'. It's a RISC architecture, with all
instructions the same length. The problem, on the contrary, is that they
are developping this architecture too actively and going in different
directions, making it difficult for the software to follow. For me, the
option of running Powerpc in LE mode is an answer to software written by
loose programmers who assume, even unconciously, that the arch is LE.
Following the Debian-Powerpc mailing list, one can read of lot of
examples of this.