On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 11:24:15PM +0200, Diederik de Haas wrote:
> On Wed May 31, 2023 at 12:44 PM CEST, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
[...]
> > 20+ year old machines are typically more power hungry, more expensive,
> > less performant, and less reliable than an up-to-date raspberry pi. If
> > you want to support people who can't afford shiny new hardware, I think
> > pointing them to raspberry pi-class hardware is a better idea than
[...]
> In the responses here, I've mostly seen the *assumption* that those old
> devices must be power hungry. While I'm quite sure modern hardware is
> more power *efficient*, that doesn't mean old hardware is thus power
> hungry.
> But most of all, I'm flabbergasted/annoyed that someone who made explicit and
> clear what they need, namely keeping support for i386, a bunch of people feel
> the need to respond like "Well, actually, you need this (other thing)".
> I find that extremely condescending.
That's actually a bit of a misrepresentation of what I said.
I do believe there are still people using i386 hardware. I know for a
fact that there are still people using m68k hardware, too.
My argument is that "it is still used" is an argument that, due to the
very fact that retrocomputing exists, will never be a wrong statement.
To name an extreme example, there exist a handful of apple I devices
that are in working order today, but nobody would reasonably suggest
that it is a platform that still matters today.
Since it is always possible to come up with an example of someone still
using some old piece of hardware, I therefore think that it is not a
very compelling argument, in and of itself.
I also specifically said that older systems *typically* require more
power for less performance (etc). Of course there are exceptions, but
those are much more rare than the more common case of 20 year old
desktop-class hardware.
As an ex contributor to the m68k port who was active on the port when
our buildd hosts were still running on actual m68k hardware, I can tell
you that 20 year old hardware is not reliable *at all*. I have forgotten
how many times we've had to scrounge for older hard drives to replace
ones that died, wiggle RAM modules around, or do various types of
insane hardware maintenance that on modern hardware just isn't
necessary (I ...<censored>... remember the one time where the one host
had to be moved because it was in a hot attic and the cooling system
had Opinions on having been run 24/7 for over a decade). As such, if
your choice is between a 20 year old piece of hardware or a brand new
one that has similar performance, your better choice is almost always
going to be the latter.
Note again how I said "almost always" here. Exceptions exist.
In my opinion, the question we should be asking ourselves is therefore
not "can we still find valid use cases for the port", because the answer
to that is always "yes" and therefore not interesting, but rather, "how
much effort will it cost us to keep the old port running".
Note that the answer to that very valid question will be influenced by
"who is interested in keeping the port available". If there is a strong
feeling that the i386 port needs to go, and there is a bunch of people
with the skills required and the interest in changing that, then there
is a fairly straightforward thing they can do to avoid the port being
binned. It requires you do lot of work, but "complain on -devel" is not
part of the job.
I was part of the team that kept doing the necessary work for years, and
we saved the port from being removed from Debian several times. If you
want to do the same for i386, the path is clear...
--
w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.
