The State of Alpha Linux

[Dialup Jon Norstog]

---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Matt Turner" <mattst88 at gmail.com>
To: "Linux on Alpha processors" <axp-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:28:17 -0500
Subject: The State of Alpha Linux

> The State of Alpha Linux
> 
> We're all subscribed to this list because we use a dying platform. We
> do what we can to keep it going, but in recent months the State of
> Alpha Linux has been deteriorating at an accelerated rate.
> 
> 

Matt, & list:

I've seen this day coming for a while.  The last usable distro was FC3 and we
only got that because a couple of Russians gave up sleeping for a year.  If,
as you say the basic libraries are becoming unusable, maybe the thing to do is
put together one really good, working Aplpha distro with clean, usable
libraries and sources.  A clean build of OpenOffice would be nice!

What the Alpha architecture did was give the Linux community a platform to
develop 64-bit Linux well ahead of the shift to x86-64 by AMD and  Intel.  MS
killed off its 64-bit programming team and still hasn't caught up.  What is
the percentage of 64-bit PCs running a 64-bit Windows OS? 

I will probably keep using my Alpha machine until it goes up in smoke. It is
my main, day-to-day computer and I also run Tru64 Unix because I've got the
DEC/Alpha version of ArcInfo.

I've got FC9 running on PC and just put a backdoor installation of FC10 on my
PC at work.  I'm not sold on these distros: I'd like to figure out how to log
on the desktop as root, I miss the superuser file manager, I used to like to
put a different picture on each of my KDE desktops, stuff like that. NTFS
mounts are handled better now .. what else?  Do we really need the latest and
greatest?

just myy thoughts.

jn