Subject: Re: State of ALPHA alpha 1.3
To: None <mjacob@ns.feral.com, yba@polytronics.com>
From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@ns.feral.com>
List: port-alpha
Date: 12/10/1997 11:11:37
>From yba@wm1i.polytronics.com  Wed Dec 10 11:03:36 1997
>   At the risk of annoying folks I'd have to say that NetBSD/alpha is
>   as usable and as stable (actually, more so) than NetBSD/sparc. Yes,
>   a lot of the fine points are missing, and yes there are some bugs
>   here and there. Still, all in all, it's within shouting distance
>   of NT/Alpha or Digital Unix.
>   
>I wonder if this means you think there is a working XFree86 for it now,
>or something other than the TGA1-only server?  Moving folks off Linux,
>which someone else held out as a goal, will take having a display driver
>that works, I would think (I know it is true for me).  I watched NT on
>a 21164, and it screams.  I would love for the picture you paint to be
>true :).
>

Heh. No- that's the big hole in this- there isn't really a good X
story for NetBSD/alpha. On the other hand, I believe that Alphas
are super server machines and I have several low budget x86
machines with #9 cards that work well as desktops.

Insofar as moving folks off of Linux- I do not state that as *my*
goal: I believe that NetBSD and Linux may address different markets
and different user communities. In fact, I still spend a substantial
amount of time on Linux- I use it for some projects and NetBSD
for others (and FreeBSD and Solaris and AIX and WinNT and....)

However, your point about the X story is well taken- I really
had forgotten about that since I really don't use the alphas as
my desktop viewing station. I started looking at the R6.1 dist
itself. I believe that CGD had been a 'member' or had some kind
of ongoing relationship with the XFree86 folks.. but I don't know
the detauls. I have the impression that there was/is a lot of
issues around how to do things for X and the alpha architecture.
I had some interest in doing a straight R6.1 implementation,
but no time.


-matt