I ignore
of starting that fire with murder. A light wind was cited by federal investigators Critical Care Inc, symbl: .CTCX. This one is an easy doubler @ 65 cents wont last long Expected target : $ 3.00 Critical Care Announces Expansion of Cost Containment Activities Business Wire (Fri, Feb 16) Critical Care to Acquire Health Care Company Business Wire (Wed, Jan 31) GET IN TOMORROW, This one is shoo in to DOUBLE National Forest supervisor.Oyler was charged with five counts of murder, 11 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Future of m68k - Etch and beyond
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 05:04:10PM -0600, Joel Ewy wrote: > I've run Potato, Woody, and Sarge on Macs ranging from a IIci to a > Quadra 840av, with Q700 and Q630 to fill in the middle. I've also run > Linux of various different distros on all kinds of x86 hardware from SLS > (anyone remember that?) on a '386/sx-40 to Ubuntu and Fedora on Athlon > systems. I used RH5.2 on a laptop with a 25 MHz '486 and 20M of RAM, > running Netscape 4 and WordPerfect 8 under FVWM95, which is rather > similar in capability to a Q700. Recently I've been using DSL quite a > bit on low-end Pentium systems. I still have an i486sl33 machine at home. It feels faster than my 060 Amigas, although the 060s should be superior to the 486. So, maybe there's an arch specific slow down (BE/LE)? > But I also believe that there are some real, practical reasons to want > to continue to use older computer systems -- sometimes re-purposed to > play a different role than that originally intended, like the '486 > running LEAF that shares my DSL connection with my household LAN. But I > think that there's still some good use in some of these old computers, > and I would be very disappointed to see all Linux support for the m68k > platform come to an end. Same to me. > Here are real uses I can imagine for m68k > systems of various sorts: (Some applications not suitable for all > hardware...) > > 1. Special purpose computer: firewall, network appliance, X terminal, > home automation controller, print server, file server, slideshow kiosk, > art installation, etc. Hmmm, slideshow kiosk? Last time I tried X on my Amigas, it was very slow. I fear that there won't be a *slide*show at all... ;) > 2. General purpose PC for lightweight GUI apps: word processing with > SIAG Office, FLWriter, or AbiWord, email with Silpheed, light Web > browsing with Dillo, and so on. I'll travel today to my parents house again. Usually I use one of my old computers to act as a temporary workstation. I don't need a fully polished KDE or Gnome there. So, a lightweight Desktop makes sense. > 3. Programming platform for students, and amateur programmers like me. > M68k is great for learning programming: the assembly language is nice, > and there's plenty of improvement left to be made. There are a lot of > things somebody could contribute to open source operating systems for > the 68k. Not everything has already been done. Sadly, the CS dept on the local university is teaching x86 assembler and I think it this is similar to other CS depts. ;) > 4. Increase the 'genetic diversity' of the 'Net. With Apple moving to > x86, we have reached a historic low point in the diversity of computing > hardware on the Internet. While the short-term benefits might be in the > economies of scale, one major down-side is that it makes the job of > malicious programmers that much easier. It's quite conceivable that a > single binary could be devised that would infect MacOS and MS-Windows, > and probably also x86-based Linux systems as well. But making it run on > a 68K Amiga or Atari would be much more difficult. And why would > anybody ever bother? Well, Debian is about freedom (of choice). It's obvious that there needs to be diversity to have a choice of at all. Within a x86 world, there's no diversity and therefore no choice. Sure, there's AMD and there's Intel, but that is like having the choice between poppy seed rolls and a normal bap. So, after Debian has fought the monolithic OS world of MS Windows, it's now supporting a monolothic world of x86 architure by pushing other archs out of the release. That's bad because one of Debians main strengths was to have the same operating system throughout all of your favorite archs. So, when this advantage is going away, why should I bother to use Debian at all, when there are other distributions that are more uptodate, are more polished, etc? > I don't see much point in spending a lot of effort trying to build GNOME > or KDE for m68k. Maybe XFCE. But I do see considerable value in > carefully selecting a subset of Debian packages that run reasonably well > on common m68k hardware and spending some time developing a distribution > based around them, possibly with a new, lightweight installer. Agreed. The main focus should IMHO be put on being able to release. When there's enough time and resources left, the port can spent some effort on other stuff like working on Gnome or KDE or such and distribute those packages via a separate repositry. It's nice to have, but it's not necessary for a release and make a good use out of these old machines. > As I've said before on this list, I think Damn Small Linux would be a > great model for an m68k-centric mini-distro. It has Debian roots, which > should simplify morphing Debian/m68k in that direction. The MyDSL > mini-package system is great for small systems. And focusing the GUI > elements around FLTK would be a good move. I think most of the Debian m68k porters
Re: Future of m68k - Etch and beyond
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 02/28/07 08:51, Ingo Juergensmann wrote: > On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 05:04:10PM -0600, Joel Ewy wrote: > [snip] > As stated above, I've got the impression that e.g. dpkg is way faster on a > slow 486 than on a (nominal) faster 060. I don't know why, though... Level 3 cache? -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFF5ZuJS9HxQb37XmcRAmLNAJ9wdgWVBZ8Al3+9A0TyYyYEPlYVUgCgjSZr NX3uR2Va2+AwoSlhjdESw38= =z0cI -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Future of m68k - Etch and beyond
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007, Ingo Juergensmann wrote: [snip] > > 2. General purpose PC for lightweight GUI apps: word processing with > >SIAG Office, FLWriter, or AbiWord, email with Silpheed, light Web > >browsing with Dillo, and so on. > > I'll travel today to my parents house again. Usually I use one of my old > computers to act as a temporary workstation. I agree. There are loads of packages that are still viable. > > 3. Programming platform for students, and amateur programmers like > >me. M68k is great for learning programming: the assembly language > >is nice, and there's plenty of improvement left to be made. There > >are a lot of things somebody could contribute to open source > >operating systems for the 68k. Not everything has already been > >done. > > Sadly, the CS dept on the local university is teaching x86 assembler and > I think it this is similar to other CS depts. ;) Perhaps so, but in electronics departments, that doesn't really hold. Microcontrollers are more important, and it seems to be that the best one for teaching assembler is the 68HC11. > > 4. Increase the 'genetic diversity' of the 'Net. With Apple moving > >to x86, we have reached a historic low point in the diversity of > >computing hardware on the Internet. While the short-term benefits > >might be in the economies of scale, one major down-side is that it > >makes the job of malicious programmers that much easier. It's > >quite conceivable that a single binary could be devised that would > >infect MacOS and MS-Windows, and probably also x86-based Linux > >systems as well. But making it run on a 68K Amiga or Atari would > >be much more difficult. And why would anybody ever bother? > > Well, Debian is about freedom (of choice). It's obvious that there needs > to be diversity to have a choice of at all. Within a x86 world, there's > no diversity and therefore no choice. Sure, there's AMD and there's > Intel, but that is like having the choice between poppy seed rolls and a > normal bap. So, after Debian has fought the monolithic OS world of MS > Windows, it's now supporting a monolothic world of x86 architure by > pushing other archs out of the release. That's bad because one of > Debians main strengths was to have the same operating system throughout > all of your favorite archs. So, when this advantage is going away, why > should I bother to use Debian at all, when there are other distributions > that are more uptodate, are more polished, etc? There are other distributions that have more flexibility. On small machines, the best distros are the source-based distros. Reason being, it is easier to control dependencies, CPU tuning and configure options to avoid wasting the limited resources. Binary package support is necessary too. > > As I've said before on this list, I think Damn Small Linux would be a > > great model for an m68k-centric mini-distro. It has Debian roots, > > which should simplify morphing Debian/m68k in that direction. The > > MyDSL mini-package system is great for small systems. And focusing > > the GUI elements around FLTK would be a good move. > > I think most of the Debian m68k porters would prefer to stay with Debian > instead of another distro. Just an assumption... ;) Yes, but I'll say it anyway: Gentoo gives you sufficient flexibility Just the fact that they don't really have a "release cycle" makes it attractive. And (apparently) it has already been ported to m68k. And it now supports multiple package repos... I can't say I've tried their m68k port, but I will do so when I get around to it -- particularly now that paludis (written in C++) is able to replace portage (written in python). [snip] > > I think such a thing is quite doable, considering the level of effort > > that has already been put into continuing to support the m68k > > architecture in Debian. Perhaps the time, computing resources, and > > expertise would be better spent if it were directed toward a somewhat > > more narrowed goal and a significantly narrowed set of packages. > > I agree here, of course. It's just insane to have to built 6600 source > packages just because of "we are able to build them", when rarely 1000 > are commonly used. Used or not, they help validate the tool chain. Well, until aranym gets faster, it may be insane to offer _certain_ packages. And it seems to me that, when the archive doubles in size, then the build farm must double too. But this isn't what killed the etch release. The problem with the debian archive on small machines is the archive itself: packages are ./configured --with-3-kinds-of-kitchen-sink, and the reverse dependencies can expect that. This blows out the number of deps, build time, run-time RAM and disk consumption etc. And, no, that isn't what killed the etch release either, but I think it illustrates where the aims of the project tend to diverge fr
