future for FBSD on alpha

[Christian Weisgerber]

Anton Shterenlikht <mexas at bristol.ac.uk> wrote:

> I wonder how many people run FBSD on alpha.

I did, until last weekend, when a hard disk died.
FreeBSD 5.5 on an AlphaPC164.  That machine held my e-mail/news
setup, which I've since moved over to an amd64.

> if the actual usage is indeed very small, it must be expected
> that ports maintainers will stop supporting alpha soon.

Your average ports maintainer has never supported alpha beyond
accepting patches if you sent them any.

> I'm trying to find out if there are people on this list, who,
> like myself, are keen to see FBSD supported on alpha
> for say 1-3 more years.

FreeBSD/alpha is effectively dead.  It is vestigially "supported"
(= not intentionally damaged) in the 6.x branch.  Meanwhile, actual
progress on FreeBSD is happening in 8.0-CURRENT.

Asking for _somebody_ to support alpha isn't going to accomplish
anything.  Either invest the work yourself or shut up.  The people
carrying the weight in FreeBSD development essentially gave up on
alpha years ago when (or before) 6.0 was branched.

I won't bother reinstalling FreeBSD 6 on my alpha.  I might put
OpenBSD on it, but then I already have an alpha running OpenBSD.
Actually, as far as there are operating systems that still support
alpha and are likely to continue doing to, OpenBSD might be your
best choice.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy at mips.inka.de