SPARC Status (Was Re: Secondary Architecture Status?)

[Jarod Wilson]

On Monday 11 May 2009 15:02:59 Peter Robinson wrote:
> > I would really like to see a proliferation of secondary arches in
> > Fedora, but I don't think 'workstation' is a viable usage model for
> > them to get started.  Most will have to focus on the type of hardware
> > that actually sells for that arch, and yes I realize that can be at
> > odds with some of the directions Fedora is going.
> 
> I think there are most likely two candidates for a secondary arch
> other than PPC. The first is sparc where from the server point of view
> where its probably about as prolific as PPC in that regard. The second
> would be arm but that is more from the NetBook/MID/Phone/STB
> perspective where there are quite a few devices in the 500Mhz-1Ghz
> range with 256-512Mb RAM. With the OLPC X0-1 we've proven that Fedora
> can run relatively well on that sort of spec, they also tend to be
> relatively cheap.

Once we switch our 32-bit x86 packages from i586 to i686 for F12
(hopefully w/sse2 enabled as well), then i586 becomes a very doable
secondary arch as well, if enough people are interested in keeping
their clunkers running the latest-n-greatest stuff...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at redhat.com