> > It may be relatively cheap and easy for *you* to buy a two-year-old > > system, but I don't believe that in this case you are representative > > of nearly enough of our users to be a useful example. > > I also find it hard to believe that the majority of our users do not > have or can not purchase a system that is less than 7 years old. Being > that is how old the i686 sub-arch is... I once attempted to install > Debian 2.1 on a Pentium 90, it took many hours and was a pita to say the > least. Machines old enough to be before i686 are probably also old > enough to be barely usable as a desktop, especially since ram prices > back then were still quite high (~ $40/MB iirc), and disk sizes quite > small (2GB HD was $300 in 1996). What are the theoretical binary-only > apps that these desktops would be using, whizbang 3d games, multimedia > players, or something else? A reduced size 386-586 arch wouldn't be bad > for a server, which imho is about all machines that old are really good > for anyway. (And no Manoj I am not attempting to troll with this post...)
I agree, the vast majority of our users can afford newer machines. So, I think we should drop m68k, mips and other similar unfashionable old archs, don't you think? The majority of our users will be happy... I would not do that. First of all, many of us do have quite old and useful machines. Lots of people use 386/486 machines as home gateways - even mission-critical gateways at the office, those machines are still enough to handle E1 level traffic. And... Well, at my gateway at home (i486) I have Samba, Bind and Apache running - And quite smoothly. If we have to split somehow what should be supported for i386-old and what should require i386-fast, we will find out many users who found a creative use for their old hardware. Debian is about choice - we should do our best to let the *user* choose what he can and can not do with his old machine. Greetings, -- Gunnar Wolf - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (+52-55)5630-9700 ext. 1366 PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23 Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973 F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF
