Anthony Towns wrote: [snip] > So, I'd just like to re-emphasise this, because I still haven't seen > anything that counts as useful. I'm thinking something like "We use s390 > to host 6231 scientific users on Debian in a manner compatible to the > workstations they use; the software we use is ....; we rely on having > security support from Debian because we need to be on the interweb 2; > ...". At the moment, the only use cases I'm confident exist are: > > m68k, mips, mipsel, hppa: I've got one in the basement, and I like > to brag that I run Debian on it; also I occassionally get some work out > of > it, but it'd be trivial to replace with i386.
Well, for mips/mipsel, this covers only the machines which aren't that relevant nowadays. Mips is one of the most numerous 32/64bit architectures currently in use, but most of the time it is hidden in things which aren't commonly recognized as computers. http://www.mips.com/ A significant portion of mips/mipsel usage is geared towards networked devices. Note that MIPS, Inc. does not manufacuture devices or CPUs, they sell CPU designs. http://www.mips.com/content/Corporate/AboutUs/content_html#mips While it would be fun to run Debian on your digital camera with a large flashcard, I don't see a real use for it, so I will restrict the following list to Products where a stable debian distribution can be useful. - Cheap/Lean/Silent desktop computer http://www.pmc-sierra.com/xiaohu/ - Digital TV/Media Player/Video Recorder http://www.ati.com/products/settopwonderxilleon/ http://www.semicon.toshiba.co.jp/eng/prd/micro/prd_inf/tx49.html Those will commonly have USB/Ethernet, and in some cases storage, which means they can be used as X-termial/Network Client/Lightweight standalone machine. - WAP/Small router/DSL Modem http://meshcube.org/index_e.html http://mycable.de/xxs1500/ Devices in this class had ~8 MB RAM two years ago and could at best run a customized linux. Today they have ~32 MB, can run Debian, but it is still beneficial to use a customized version (http://sourceforge.net/projects/picodebian). They are likely to grow further in the near future. The main hindrance for Debian on these systems is the lack of available storage. The size of cheap flash memory grows much faster than the debian base installation, so this problem will go away over time as well. - High-end prototype boards http://sibyte.broadcom.com/public/boards/index.html Those boards are used by vendors to evaluate/test the CPU they have chosen for their product (Cisco and NetApp are well-known names). Some Debian developers have such boards. While they aren't easy to come by, and the userbase outside Debian is small, they are valuable because of their speed. [snip] > arm: We're developing some embedded boxes, that won't run Debian > proper, but it's really convenient to have Debian there to bootstrap > them trivially. ARM is roughly in the same situation like the slower MIPS CPUs, but with a large percentage of it used in mobile devices. With mobile networking on the rise Debian gets more interesting there. > s390: Hey, it's got spare cycles, why not? AFAIH there are some serious Debian users on s390, but they don't talk about it publicly. [snip] > Knowing why you're > using Debian and not another distribution or OS would be interesting too. Outside the non-free/commercial realm, there are three choices for mips/mipsel: - NetBSD, with a small core of software, limited (build-)testing outside that, and reproducibility problems caused by the source-centric approach - Gentoo, with all of the above, linux based, and still tagged as experimental, which means experimental by Gentoo standards - Debian Thiemo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
