Waxing Philosophical

[Dialup Jon Norstog]

Dear Mike & lists

I've got a PC that runs Linux twice as fast as my Miata and somewhat faster
than my XP1000.  I light it up about once a week but I use the Miata every
day.  I don't evn bother updating the kernel or Xserver, just use whatever the
current distro puts down on the hard drive.  

For me, it's like owning and driving an old Maserati, except it doesn't leak
oil all over the garage and I don't have to crawl under it, and it didn't cost
me $60K up front. I can soup up the kernel, compile my own software, try out
different compilers.  It runs ArcInfo like a champ under Tru64. If i need to
run Windows apps, I can do that too.  It's just  ...  more   ... fun.

jn



--
Allidaho LLC (http://www.allidaho.com)


---------- Original Message -----------
From: Mike Barnes <strepsil at gmail.com>
To: Linux and Red Hat on Alpha processors <axp-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 20:51:22 +1000
Subject: Waxing Philosophical

> I was looking back over the list archives the other day, and noticed
> that it's coming up on one year since I first started trying to build
> some Fedora Core 1 packages on the Alpha. This leads me to something
> I've been wondering for a while ...
> 
> What is it about the Alpha that's got me doing this? Why spend twelve
> months compiling, tweaking, hunting down patches and clues to build a
> system on this platform when I could go out, spend a couple of 
> hundred dollars on a PC, and just download and install a recent 
> Fedora Core build?
> 
> Is this the same mania that classic car restorers suffer from? It's
> not like I do anything spectacularly demanding on my Alphas - I'm not
> into numerical computing or anything that demands huge addressable
> memory spaces. My primary home system is a nice dual-processor G4 
> Mac. It works fine. My main mail and web server is a dual Athlon box 
> that is perfectly adequate to the task.
> 
> I need a Linux or Unix-ish system to mess with from time to time, and
> that's where my Alphas have come in. I like them. There's "something"
> about the nice, familar blue of the SRM console that I just don't get
> from a PC's BIOS setup. The lines of the DS10 case are pleasing in a
> way that my admittedly "sexy" G4 isn't.
> 
> So why? What does this platform have that I've never seen in the Sun
> or SGI systems that I've messed with? What makes me feel strongly
> about the fate of the Alpha line when I couldn't case less if MIPS 
> was discontinued?
> 
> Not looking for answers. Just needed to write down the questions. 
> Carry on. :)
> 
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------- End of Original Message -------