Best freBDS 64bit version or fork for ~2001-2002 DEC Aplha?

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 11:37:21 +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 12:09:40 +0100
> Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 16 Mar 2016 18:55:16 +1100, Chris Hope wrote:
> > > As pre-purchase research I'm looking to buy a $500-800(AUD) DEC Alpha
> > > 64bit home desktop workstation circa 1998-2001.
> > > 
> > > What is the latest kernel 64bit either internal project or recommended
> > > fork that supports it (with KDE/Gnome 1 or similar UI).
> > 
> > I'd say that the current production release FreeBSD/ia64 10.2
> 
> 	ia64 is Itanium, that's not going to run on an Alpha.

Sorry... not compatible with Alpha 64 bit? My mistake... as you
can see, I'm out of "non-x86 country" for a long time so I can't
even properly recognize the most common architecture names... :-(



> > Otherwise, check out FreeBSD/alpha, but keen in mind this
> > branch has been discontinued:
> > 
> > https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/alpha.html
> 
> 	That should do - but it is ancient, ports are likely to be
> troublesome.

This will only work with older versions of KDE or Gnome (of the
requested time period, 10 years ago) as they are in the source
repository for that FreeBSD version and the corresponding ports
infrastructure. Binary packages are probably still available,
but (as well) only for that older system version.



> NetBSD may be a better option.

Yes, NetBSD support is probably much better - both the OS and
the applications are current.

http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/alpha/

NetBSD/alpha 7.0 sure is worth trying.

-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...