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Debian May Drop the SPARC Architecture

posted by janrinok on Wednesday April 30 2014, @03:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the problems-with-hardware-software-and-people dept.

omoc writes:

Reported by LWN:

As of tonight, there is no more SPARC in testing. The main reasons were lack of porter commitments, problems with the toolchain and continued stability issues with our machines.

The fate of SPARC in unstable has not been decided yet. It might get removed unless people commit to working on it. Discussion about this should take place on #745938.

(Cross submitted on pipedot.org)

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by GlennC on Wednesday April 30 2014, @07:22PM

    by GlennC (3656) on Wednesday April 30 2014, @07:22PM (#38225)

    Given that most of the Debian installations and derivatives I'm aware of are all on X86 or X64 type systems, is it that much of a problem that nobody is working on SPARC system development?

    It appears that most people who continue to buy SPARC based systems intend to run Solaris.

    --
    Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by nadaou on Thursday May 01 2014, @01:26AM

    by nadaou (2929) on Thursday May 01 2014, @01:26AM (#38313)

    "I don't use this, therefore no one else would ever want to either" is a dangerous logical trap that as humans we all need to work hard to train ourselves to avoid.

    For the record, we run Debian on several non-Intel/AMD architectures here, and the death of Debian for SPARC or Alpha means the death of the otherwise working fine hardware for many users, and a lot of work to get back to what was previously running smoothly. Historic hardware choice is often beyond our control for many reasons, and porting to a new platform is not always easily done for a number of other important reasons.

    Running a common software environment, like Debian, helps ease that transition to new hardware when it does finally occur.

    --
    ~ Forward in all directions ~

    • (Score: 1) by petecox on Thursday May 01 2014, @04:22AM

      by petecox (3228) on Thursday May 01 2014, @04:22AM (#38355)

      Would petitioning Oracle with a support contract work? According to wikipedia, they have 11,000 subscribers attached to Oracle Linux.

      Employ a couple of SPARC experts to extend the program to Sun/Oracle hardware and by extension fix debian builds...

      How many active debian-SPARC users actually exist and what financial contribution from each would see this become a reality?

    • (Score: 2) by GlennC on Thursday May 01 2014, @12:25PM

      by GlennC (3656) on Thursday May 01 2014, @12:25PM (#38460)

      This is why I asked the question, and I appreciate the response.

      --
      Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.