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Debian Drops SPARC Platform Support
jones_supa writes: SPARC isn't exactly a highly-used architecture anymore, so the Debian operating system is dropping support for the platform, according to Joerg Jaspert last week in the "debian-sparc" mailing list. He noted that this does not block a later comeback as "sparc64." Following that announcement, a new post today tells us that SPARC support was just removed from the unstable, experimental and jessie-updates channels.
Ah, but there's still a lot of old 32-bit x86 stuff out there, so the barrier to entry is extremely low. We still have 32-bit machines in-production, albeit they're the oldest ones still being used, but there are probably several thousand still running.
Dropping Sparc unfortunately makes sense. Hardware was already exotic and somewhat uncommon when it was new and still supported, and is now even more rare and given its proprietary nature, more likely to simply be permanently removed if it breaks. It's also no entry-level friendly; a kid wanting to play with Linux 'just to see' can go to the Goodwill and buy an old x86 box for $20 and friends can help make things work.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
For more than just a couple of us here, I suspect, there was a time when "Sparc," "UNIX," "graphics," "Internet," and "science" were all nearly synonymous terms.
I did a six-month internship at a Fortune 500 company in 1997 where every programmer had a SPARC workstation and a row of UNIX binders on a shelf above their desk. No one actually used the binders for anything, as they were just office decorations like the plastic plants. You couldn't be a SERIOUS ENGINEER without a row of SERIOUS BINDERS above your desk.
I'm not sure anyone used Debian on sparc for anything serious(read business use), though.
Let's be honest......the day the value of open source software is determined by its "business use," is the day the open source community is dead.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
SPARC != commodity either. Can't go to the local store and pick up an ATX-form-factor SPARC motherboard and processor off-the-shelf.
Granted, SPARC isn't completely discontinued, but if Debian can't find enough developers to work on the platform then that shows them there isn't enough interest in order to be able to keep it alive.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This decision makes sense, since Debian is so dominant on Intel boxes that they can't afford resources to support SPARC - even though the port already exists and it's simply a matter of migrating the same incremental changes that are there on Lintel to SPARC.
So much for the claim Linux fans make of the OS being 'everywhere' - here is a UNIX only CPU: no version of Windows ever ran on it, only UNIX-like OSs, such as SunOS, Solaris, Linux and *BSD.