On Tue, 4 Mar 2008, Michael Casadevall wrote:
> I suspose the question needs to be asked; what are people doing with > their old m68ks. That's almost a FAQ on this list... This is what I do with my old m68ks, and why I think it might be useful: - I write code for them. In a small way that helps other ports. Having many ports is good because it tends to improve the common code and that benefits all users. - I learn from them. Writing code for the kernel teaches me a lot about computer architecture fundamentals, the code base and development process (as Brad mentioned). - I find problems by using them. Code bloat, churn and bit rot for example. Linux is supposed to be scalable and flexible. Using abstraction layers means that complexity shouldn't impact where isn't needed. Our port is a bell wether in that it reveals such problems early (e.g. the overhead in the "Completely Fair Scheduler". I think there is an open question as to the need for multiple algorithms with different time/space tradeoffs.) - I fix them. Linus said in a recent interview, "I want [Linux] to be the best." Well, I want the 2.6 kernel to work better than the older versions. A lot of effort from a lot people went into the pre-2.6 mac kernels only to lie abandoned in a CVS repo somewhere while the "latest and greatest" mainline kernel was left completely broken. That bothered me. - I preserve them. Some people like to restore antique furniture, cars, steam engines, whatever -- for me it is computers. Anyone who appreciates a museum or a period movie would perhaps appreciate that too. - I help repurpose them. Buying a fast GPU only to have it serve as a frame buffer is quite ludicrous. I'm not happy throwing away working equipment in the interests of questionable business models. - I do this stuff because I can! Open source is supposed to permit exactly what we are doing with it -- that is, it should cater to special interests. Moreover, a viral open source license has to deal with this somehow because every architecture faces obsolescence sooner or later. I think part of the solution is disintermediation (which begs Ingo's question, "perhaps m68k should drop debian"). It would be difficult to place a value on some of these uses and weigh them against the cost of serving a package archive or maintaining a port etc. I'm not going to try. There are other pursuits (like art or service to community) that can't be justified by that kind of analysis. As a teenager I learned structured programming on 68k macs and perhaps because of that I have a sentimental attachment to these machines -- call it nostalgia. All that may sound more like Frequently Questioned Answers (FQA) than a FAQ. That's fine, I like FQA's :-) -f -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
