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Alpha Relegated To FreeBSD's Tier 2

Posted by timothy on from the alpha-is-dying dept.

flynn_nrg writes "Scott Long, from the release engineering team, has sent this message to the freebsd-alpha mailing list:'The day has finally come to demote FreeBSD/Alpha to tier-2 status. While I'm sure that this will come as a disappointment to many, the simple truth is that there is no longer enough community interest nor developer interest to fix critical bugs and assist in the development of new features. We've struggled with this for several years, and it's time to set the proper expectations before we enter 5-STABLE.'" (Read on for the rest of the announcement.)

"Being Tier-2 does not mean that Alpha support will actively be removed from the tree. It does, however, mean that ISO images might not be produced for upcoming releases, pre-compiled packages might not be produced and more (in fact, this already stopped several weeks ago), and future security advisories might not be issued for it. This only applies to FreeBSD 5.3 and beyond; existing alpha releases are still supported by the security team according to their schedule, and future 4.x erratas and releases will still support it also. Demotion is also not a terminal condition. If in the future there is an renewed interest and the existing problems can be fixed, it can be re-considered for tier-1.

Alpha was a very important platform for FreeBSD. It paved the way both for 64-bit cleanliness and for being able to support multiple architectures. It was also a nice and refreshing architecture in a world of bland and hackish i386 systems. Thanks to Doug Rabson for porting to it in the first place and thanks to everyone who supported it afterwards.

The Release Engineering Team"

70 comments

  1. This is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Energy ought to be put towards platforms that still exist.

    Alpha is as dead as a doornail. While RISC may still be flourishing, this pioneer is dead.

    Keeping Alpha support around is like keeping Lenin's pickled corpse in a mausoleum. It may invoke feelings of nostalgia, but he's not coming back no matter how hard we wish he would.

    1. Re:This is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keeping Alpha support around is like keeping Lenin's pickled corpse in a mausoleum. It may invoke feelings of nostalgia, but he's not coming back no matter how hard we wish he would.

      Are you wishing for a Lenin comeback?

    2. Re:This is a good thing by n0dez · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Now they can focus more on i386, amd64 and ia64.

    3. Re:This is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keeping Alpha support around is like keeping Lenin's pickled corpse in a mausoleum. It may invoke feelings of nostalgia, but he's not coming back no matter how hard we wish he would.

      Because everyone looks back wistfully upon the death and suffering of millions of people? Yes, let us all pray that the Great Lenin will rise from his display case and exile, imprison and execute anyone that gets in his way!

      WTF are you talking about? And who the hell thought that was insightful?

      I hate losing Karma when I'm right! :b

  2. alpha is dead by konmem · · Score: 3

    or dying? On a serious note -- how many people still use Alpha? It is a shame to see such an elegantly designed processor die.

    --
    This sig intentionally left blank.
    1. Re:alpha is dead by revmoo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Netcraft confirms it! Alpha is....... nevermind

      --
      I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
    2. Re:alpha is dead by isthisthingon · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uhhh. I do. :-) We have two Alpha boxen running BSD for a variety of purposes. They're brutally dependable and really just plain fun to work with. The SRM BIOS is more like a shell than a BIOS in the sense that most people are familar with. For someone familar with Unix, it makes so much sense--no goofy menu/submenu systems like most i386 BIOSes to go hunting through for the setting you're trying to change.

      We had a situation where a cooling unit failed and a couple of RAID cards, drives, RAM, and what not fried in some of our i386 boxes, but the Alphas (knock wood) have never missed a beat even after that.

      I SOOO wish there was a bigger call for 'em in the marketplace, these two servers are among the finest pieces of engineering I've ever encountered. Really. They're great. But, alas! Alphas got trounced by Intel. :-|

      Sigh. Sad day.

      --
      And then one day you find, ten years have gone behind you....
    3. Re:alpha is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps you could tell us the fine vintage of these Alpha boxes. I'm guessing 7-8 years old.

      While Alphas are still in production, the newer systems are only made for the VMS/Tru64 legacy market. DEC made an effort to promote Alpha as a commodity system, but Compaq/HP never did.

      (Also, comparing the quality of the fans in a upmarket Alpha box with some unspecified x86 stuff you bought off pricewatch is a pretty dubious endorsement of the CPU.)

    4. Re:alpha is dead by isthisthingon · · Score: 1

      One is from 1996; one from 1998 (I think).

      As for the fans, that's acutally (somewhat) true. I think the fans on the older of the two may've actually come from the same assembly line as a '96 Ford. (Suffice it to say, IT'S VERY LOUD! [Shudders.])

      FWIW: The fans on the i386 boxes were all good fans, too, as far as I can gauge (no Pricewatch or BestBuy specials! [grin]), it just so happened the Alphas survived the harsh conditions. That's my story, and I'm stickin' with it. ;-)

      --
      And then one day you find, ten years have gone behind you....
    5. Re:alpha is dead by johnalex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We're using a DEC (that's right, the original DEC) Alpha 2100 here to run our credit union software. We've upgraded almost everything that can be upgraded short of adding an additional processor. This unit came in the door in 1994. It's still running as it has for almost 10 years now: 24x7x365.

      I've always said, if DEC had hired quality marketing people in addition to quality engineers, the company would still be in business. They designed and built rock-solid stuff.

      --
      JA
      http://www.johnalex.org/
    6. Re:alpha is dead by acidrain69 · · Score: 1

      I have a Dec 5300 dual 533 I use as my firewall/router/fileserver/battle.net server/shoutcast server. It does it's job fine, but it's a power hungry beast, and compatibility isn't quite up to what you get with the i386 platform. Compiling the kernel was a bitch, but I finally got it up to kernel 2.6 branch. I'm seriously considering switching down to an old P2 or a duron 900 for the power saving and compatibility alone. I don't do heavy lifting, and I don't really take advantage of the 64 bitness, so there is no point except the geek factor.

      --
      -- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
    7. Re:alpha is dead by gorodish · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We have 23 DS-10 Alpha boxes that were left over after we retired our old render farm. They are four years old, but still have the horsepower to make dandy network servers (though we run OpenBSD on them). And the SRM console is very powerful and makes them true machine room servers. I can even reset them and cycle power via the serial port, using the RMC (Remote Management Console) feature. They are great workhorse machines. Thanks DEC!

    8. Re:alpha is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are you complaining? Itanium servers are just as reliable, faster, and cheaper. Trounced by Intel? Screwed by DEC, you mean.

    9. Re:alpha is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have two Alphas at my house. One with FreeBSD (sigh) and one with Tru64. The alpha will live on as bits and pieces of ideas in other processors (presumably the IA64 would be one of them, for sure) but it would never be the same.

    10. Re:alpha is dead by timothy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Re: the DEC business story, you might find the book "The Ultimate Entrepreneur" interesting; it's about Ken Olsen and the rise of DEC. Even more outdated than the link below says, but certain aspects of history, uh, tend not to change :) I found this book in a free-books pile somewhere, and enjoyed it. Olsen, says the book, was a control freak (in a good way) and in particular exacting about packaging / chassis designs.

      timothy

      (http://www.bitworm.com/detail/0809245590/The_Ul ti mate_Entrepreneur_The_Story_of_Ken_Olsen_and_Digit al_Equipment_Corporation.html)

      --
      jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    11. Re:alpha is dead by bugmenot · · Score: 2

      Yes, unfortunatly intel destroyed them.
      If alpha was in intels posistion now, computers in general would have been much better.

      too bad.

      --
      This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
    12. Re:alpha is dead by obirt · · Score: 1

      Really? Were they available in 1994 too?

      --

      I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
    13. Re:alpha is dead by obirt · · Score: 2

      If by destroyed you mean violated their agreement with DEC and copied parts of the chip design of the Alpha into the Pentium II, then yes.

      --

      I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
    14. Re:alpha is dead by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Not just the quality of the fans, but the design of the case.. cheap nasty x86 boxes typically have a fan on the cpu recirculating air around.. Alpha machines had fans to draw air in from outside of the case, push it over the cpu and other components, then a second fan to draw it out the back.
      Aside from that, i had an alpha where the fans failed and the machine just kept running for weeks.. it was however INCREDIBLY hot

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    15. Re:alpha is dead by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Actually itanic would still be more expensive were it not for HP artificially inflating the price on alpha systems to try and drive customers to itanic. Aside from that, itanic servers are NOT as reliable as alpha... what about the bug lately where itanic chips couldn`t run at their rated clockrate and the recommended solution was to underclock them? Does this sound like a well designed machine to you? To me it sounds more like a cheap nasty back street clone that`s overclocked to sell for a higher price.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    16. Re:alpha is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Artificially" inflating prices? That's a good one. The company who made it is long dead. The OSes that ran on it are dead. Everyone's fleeing in droves. You should be glad that you can even still buy one.

    17. Re:alpha is dead by unics · · Score: 0

      I have a AS 4/233 first of the first to enter the 64-bit arena. It has been my firewall for my broadband cable access since 1997. It's solid hardware. What kind of PC lasts 7 years without replacing any parts that runs 24/7?

      Comcast complained that my modem was up "too-long". I mean this machine has seen +400 day uptimes. I wish I could say the same about my modem.

      Same fans, power supply ...etc. The computer mfgs. don't make them like they used to.

  3. welcome back ... by hubertf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... to NetBSD.

    Bread from the bakery,
    meat from the butcher,
    and multiplatform operating systems from The NetBSD Foundation.

    - Hubert

    1. Re:welcome back ... by Dahan · · Score: 2

      Yup, my thanks to everyone who's worked on NetBSD... It's been running my DEC AlphaPC 164 server for almost 5 years now.

  4. Bright Side of Things by vga_init · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hey, there's always VMS! =)

    1. Re:Bright Side of Things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users. Serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.

    2. Re:Bright Side of Things by LWATCDR · · Score: 0, Troll

      Total troll but.

      "UNIX is a simple language" FALSE UNIX is an operating system not a language. The rest is just too mind numbingly stupid to comment on.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    3. Re:Bright Side of Things by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Informative
      That went right over your head. Ken Olsen, the President of DEC, made those comments in 1984. It's kind of a "640K is enough for anybody" sort of thing, except that Mr. Olsen actually said this.

      I thought it was pretty funny and relevant, personally.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    4. Re:Bright Side of Things by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Okay your right I had not herd of that before. Learn something every day. Yea it was a troll but one from 1984. Thanks.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    5. Re:Bright Side of Things by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      Nope it was funny and I got burned. It was a long time ago. I did once see Bill Gates give a talk in Orlando and say, "OS/2 is the future of the PC!"
      My bad. Dooohhh

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    6. Re:Bright Side of Things by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 1

      I don't think describing UNIX as a language is as wrong as one would initially think. UNIX has a way of thinking and a way of doing things very firmly attached to it, just as human languages do.

      What he got wrong (maybe intentionally) was how much UNIX can do. It's modular and extensible enough to do anything. But what it does happens in the UNIX way.

      --
      I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
    7. Re:Bright Side of Things by boisepunk · · Score: 1

      crap post
      glorious jihad
      praise allah
      we will be victorious

      amen

      --
      main(0)
  5. Does this mean the trolls are right for once? by britneys+9th+husband · · Score: 0

    From http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/committers-guide/archs.html:

    Architectures reaching end of life may also be moved from Tier 1 status to Tier 2 status as the availability of resources to continue to maintain the system in a Production Quality state diminishes.
    Not to be a troll or anything, but it would seem to me that "reaching end of life" is basically a fancy way of saying "dying." So does this mean FreeBSD/Alpha is dying? If so, someone ought to post a eulogy in honor of the dead or something.

    --
    Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
  6. This doesn't mean it's dead by agent+dero · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All this really means is that they will not concentrate their efforts on the Alpha port as much as AMD64, and i386.

    It is by no means dead, if you have an Alpha, you can try to help them out ;)

    --
    Error 407 - No creative sig found
  7. when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by discogravy · · Score: 1

    just about the only things that run on sparcs/sun hardware is solaris, free|netBSD and debian. (and really old/outdated versions of other distros).

    --
    FreeBSD for the impatient.
    1. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by bplipschitz · · Score: 3, Informative

      just about the only things that run on sparcs/sun hardware is solaris, free|netBSD and debian. (and really old/outdated versions of other distros).

      Maybe eventually, but there is strong support for Sparc64 on Free/Net/OpenBSD. With regular Sparc, you're relegated to Net and OpenBSD [in BSD world], which again still has strong support.

      What's cool about the Sparc64 support, is that the support for different things amongst the BSD's is very different, so you have to really get to know the OS, and choose based upon what you intend to use the machine for.

      For example, I run OpenBSD on both an Ultra1 and an Ultra2, as these are 'desktop' machines [and do some minor fileserving]. I run OpenBSD not for the security, but because they have the best framebuffer support for X. I run FreeBSD on a headless E250 that I use as a workstation file backup machine, because it has more ported applications from which to choose.

      Then there is my lowly mailserver, running NetBSD on a dual CPU SS 20.

      They all perform flawlessly, and are more stable with their respective OS's than with Slowlaris.

    2. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gosh, if I have a Sun, the best thing that runs on it is... SOLARIS!

      Shocker!

      Here's a hint kid: if I own a Sun, the thing I *want* to run on it is... SOLARIS!

      Sheesh. Putting Linux on a Sun is like putting $25 tires on a Ferrari.

    3. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by bplipschitz · · Score: 1

      Gosh, if I have a Sun, the best thing that runs on it is... SOLARIS!

      Shocker!

      Here's a hint kid: if I own a Sun, the thing I *want* to run on it is... SOLARIS!

      Golly, Daddy, why is it when I run XSun on Solaris, it eats up all my real memory, eventually crashing X? Gets awful fucking annoying when it happens *every time*!

      This has never happened with X on any of the flavors of BSD I run on my Sun machines. I'll stick with BSD. . .

    4. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by evilviper · · Score: 1
      I run OpenBSD not for the security, but because they have the best framebuffer support for X.

      Wow! This just might be the first comment I've ever seen on /. that explains that OpenBSD is good for something other than routing, and high security...

      You're in the company of around a dozen of people on /. who have actually used it extensively... Congratulations!
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    5. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 1

      You can still buy a new sparc machine. The only people that can buy new Alphas are people that have preexisting contracts to buy them.

      --
      I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
    6. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by nicolas.e · · Score: 1

      So, as I understand : Sun makes the hardware, Sun makes the software, Sun test them, and they don't find such an ovious flaw ???

      Have you considered that you might have fucked up something yourself ?

    7. Re:when will this happen to sun/sparc hardware? by bplipschitz · · Score: 1

      So, as I understand : Sun makes the hardware, Sun makes the software, Sun test them, and they don't find such an ovious flaw ???

      Have you considered that you might have fucked up something yourself ?

      Known flaw in Slowlaris 8. I'd already converted everything to OpenBSD, so no reason to even try 9.

  8. Re:alpha is dead *FALSE TROLL MOD* by Eneff · · Score: 1

    It was a joke, folks!

    And back on topic in response, a 27gb RAID-5 is still not a bad file server, even if I wouldn't throw too many computers at it. It reminds me of the story of the 733 p3 desktop IDE, slow hard drive, and Windows 98 running as a psuedo-server, compared to the 60MHZ P1 with a SCSI drive and Novell. My friend (a junior sysadmin) was amazed to see how fast, relatively, that old box was.

    Apples to Oranges? Of course! However, the lesson is that CPU speed is a poor judgement on many servers.

    Oh, and see if you can't put that puppy into Raid-0 just to see how fast it reacts. :)

  9. Gentoo works as well by harikiri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to run OpenBSD on my Ultra10, it's now running Gentoo - because I wanted some additional software like latest XFCE and Evolution - that wasn't supported in OpenBSD.

    --
    Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
    1. Re:Gentoo works as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Strange... both of these are in ports.

    2. Re:Gentoo works as well by DashEvil · · Score: 1

      The keyword there is `latest'. Either way, I'm willing to be that compiling both those apps by hand would be trivial.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    3. Re:Gentoo works as well by harikiri · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, due to the large number of dependencies of some of these programs, it suspect it would be a pain to do it all by hand.

      I've been looking into getting XFCE built by hand on my powerbook, because it's not supported by Fink (beyond the 3.x branch). It's caused me so much grief that I've temporarily ditched it in favour of IceWM.

      However, simply for a server, there's very few "cuttting edge" programs you'd need to manually build. So in that situation I'd advocate one of the BSD's.

      --
      Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
  10. Is Alpha still current technology? by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

    Is Alpha still a current platform? Are any companies still producing Alpha based systems? I'm sure we'll continue to see Alpha on embedded systems, but that has always been NetBSD's forte. Am I correct in this assumption, or have I been cloistered in the IA32 world for too long?

    I don't to relegate Alpha users to second class citizenship, but neither should FreeBSD releases be held up because of bugs on "legacy" hardware.

    --
    Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    1. Re:Is Alpha still current technology? by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      I doubt that you will see much in the way of embedded Alphas. Intel owns the Alpha and really has no reason to push it in the embedded market place.
      In the very low power risc space they have the X-Scale.
      In the low power the have the Pentium-M
      For the eat all the electrons you want and double as a pizza oven you have Xeon and IA-64.
      No real place for the Alpha. Really is a shame it was sold out. DEC Could have been very interesting with the ALPHA they might have been abile to scale from the desktop up to SMP superservers not to mention the XScale/ARM in the low power embeded space. All of it running Linux and BSD. Could have been cool.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    2. Re:Is Alpha still current technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HP still produces alpha systems.

      But it is a dead end. Basically. But it will be around for a while, knowing people like to have such expensive things supported for a long time when they buy it ..

    3. Re:Is Alpha still current technology? by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think they're still made, but only to satisfy military contracts. They're not current, they just get die shrinks and more cache. They're not bad processors even now, but they cost a fortune and even SPARC is faster now.

      --
      I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
    4. Re:Is Alpha still current technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The current Alpha products from HP are the Marvel Servers, which I believe continue to upset Itanic advocates with their performance, given the fact that the Alpha chip has had 0 development $$$$ for years.

  11. Where is 5.3? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dammit. It's late again.

  12. Dying, but not dead yet. by Macka · · Score: 1


    Lots of people still do. There is one more clock increased Alpha chip to be released yet and people are still buying them. I should know, I'm a contractor and I specialize in integration of Tru64/TruCluster's on Alpha. All my business involves new systems and new projects, and this years Alpha business for me has been better than last year, so far.

    1. Re:Dying, but not dead yet. by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Well, HP aren't marketting the pa-risc anymore, sgi are going down the pan and the itanic isn't really taking off, leaving the alpha to sell itself without any marketting, which is pretty much what it did all along.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  13. Tier-1 loss not that big a deal by hmallett · · Score: 2

    I would have thought that most alphas would be running 4 or previous - something more proven. Anyone who's that bothered about tier-1 status probably wouldn't be running an unstable release. Do many people use 5 on alphas?
    Losing Tier-1 status may not be that big a deal. AMD64 is tier-1, and there's no gdb or loadable module support (at least not in 5.2.1, I don't know about -CURRENT).

    1. Re:Tier-1 loss not that big a deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reason to run FreeBSD 5 and not 4 is: gcc. If you use your alpha as a desktop machine, as I do, lots of c++ stuff (think KDE or mozilla) simply does not compile on alpha with gcc-2.95.
      That's why I run FreeBSD and not NetBSD on my alphastation (will change due to import of gcc-3 into NetBSD and now Tier 2 status in FreeBSD).

  14. Re:24 x 7 x 365 by OwnedByTwoCats · · Score: 1

    Do you shut it down every leap-day for maintenance? Or is it really 24 x 7 x 365.2422?