[rescue] [geeks] Last Call - Ultra 5/10 parts

[Mauricio Tavares]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
>> The list was built on the "rescue" conceit.  The idea that we could
>> take dumpstered systems and make them useful again is pretty empty in
>> 2014.
>
> It is?  I do it regularly.  I snag machines on their way out and put
> them to work doing useful things.  I just recently set one up as a VPN
> endpoint at work.
>
      I am glad you are able to put those machines into use. I kept a
few 1U Suns and the RS6000/170 as my last proper unix boxes, but had
to throw away a lot of RISC boxes when I moved to a smaller apartment.
At work they are primarily Linux and then OSX.

>> The Oracle deal has killed patch availability, killed opensolaris,
>> and slowly strangled the hobbyist scene.
>
> Only for Suns.
>
> Admittedly, that's a substantial loss, though more so for many of you
> than for me.  Patch availability is irrelevant if you don't care about
> the OS being patched (which I don't, Solaris and all other
> closed-source OSes).  The major thing Oracle killed that I personally
> care about was the chance of getting hardware documentation for things
> like the cg14's DMA engine or the SUNW,rtvc.
>
>> At this point we are all historians.  There's no "rescue" for SPARCs,
>> only roles in zoo exhibits.
>
> Oh?  So the uses I'm making of my SPARCs don't count, or what?  (My
> routine screens-and-keyboards, at home and at one of my workplaces, are
> SS20s with cg14s and type-3 keyboards.)
>
      I don't know about you but I learned Solaris way before Linux.
My old SS2 helped me get my first real job; I hope who got it is
giving it a loving home I could no longer provide.

>> That's OK with me, I guess.  I'm glad we persist.
>
> So am I, mostly.  But, sometimes, I feel as though I should just walk
> out on the ice floe; the world no longer wants people like me.
>
      That is a question only you can answer. I personally always
liked SPARC and Solaris and SunOS and Sun in general, but can't say
the same about Oracle.

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