Re: Is this list alive?

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> Ugh, why [suck it up and migrate all the services to amd64]?  I
>> parse "commode" in "commodity".  [amd64] hardware is crap...
> where else to go?

Depends on what you're after.

If you just want computrons, then yeah, you want amd64...or possibly
ARM or some such if low power is an important consideration.  And
there's probably no point in your being on this list.

I'm here because I like the Alpha.  I have Alphas, which I sometimes
run (and would like to run more), rather than amd64s.  I have/run them
because I want to.  I enjoy it in a way I don't enjoy running on peecee
hardware.  Much the same is true of my SPARCs.  Dreamcast.  Shark.  Etc.

There is a small pragmatic benefit, in that running on a variety of
machines impels me to write more portable code.  It's only small,
though, both because I've mostly internalized the attitudes that lead
to portable code anyway and because "everybody" is running linux on
x86_64 and there's thus "no point" in being portable to anything else.
(Yes, as the quotes imply, I don't actually agree with those "facts",
nor the points of view they lead to.)  More to the point, the pragmatic
benefit can mostly be obtained with only some three or four machines,
not the list I have ({32,64}-bit, {big,little}-endian, alignment
{in,}sensitive, that covers most of it).

> the same concerns as storage apply: capacity, performance,
> availability, physical space, and power consumption / waste heat.

Yeah.  If those are more important to you than whatever considerations
got you running alphas, then I'd suggest offering the alphas here, or
on classiccmp or some such, and running amd64s instead.  You'll
probably be happier - and whoever ends up with the alphas almost
certainly will be.

But if you have other considerations, reasons you want to run alphas
instead of peecees, then they are your answer to the above, and they
can guide you in deciding whether it's better, for you, to look for a
way to use "modern" drives on your alphas or to stockpile "36G" or
"72G" drives or the like, or what.

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