[rescue] Linux

[Chris Hedemark]

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On Thursday, November 28, 2002, at 08:27 PM, Carl R. Friend wrote:

>    OK, I'll risk becoming a pariah here, but I really think that
> the OEM's OS should be taken as part and parcel of the machinery.
> After all, it _is_ part of the historical "fabric" of any device
> one may collect.

I somewhat agree, but I've been finding with a lot of my hardware 
getting the "correct" OS can be maddening.  I finally got a license for 
OpenVMS on my VAX but I noticed the license is set to expire in a year. 
  WTF?!?  That said, I'll probably just put OpenBSD on the thing.  
Getting HP-UX 11 seems to be an even bigger pain.  So my HP's will 
probably run something else (Debian seems to be the most mature option 
for this hardware).

For my ooold Suns, I can no longer get historic versions of the OS from 
Sun.  I've got a couple of VME bus systems kicking around here, some 
sun4c boxen, etc. and Sun doesn't offer any legal options for people 
inheriting this class of hardware.

So going back to my reasons for running OpenBSD (and, to a lesser 
extent, Linux) I will not have problems finding historical releases of 
either OS and won't have any unusual licensing restrictions to worry 
about.

I would very much like to run historically correct software on some of 
the systems I've named here.  But almost all of the vendors are really 
bad about hobbyist licenses, and Sun is perhaps the best of them.  Even 
*they* drop historical releases as soon as something newer is 
available.  HP (and their acquisitions) and IBM are much worse.  Poor 
Dave has got probably the coolest rescue en route to his place now, and 
his chances of scoring MVS/TSO for that iron is pretty slim (or even VM 
for that matter).

Chris Hedemark
Hillsborough, NC
http://yonderway.com


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