[Rule-list] RH strategies and other distros

[Marco Fioretti]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 18:24:30 at 06:24:30PM -0700, Colin Mattoon wrote:
[snip]
> 
> The focus is on the deprecation of the i386 and i486 processors. And
> that's pretty much a "done deal." Less obvious is that a very high
> percentage of i586 machines are also now off limits to Red Hat users.
[snipped description of how difficult it is to find older RAM modules:
with Colin's permission, I'd like to add it to the FAQ as the perfect
answer to those saying "just buy more RAM"]
> 
> So, as demand for i586 compatibility in Red Hat's North American
> market
> quickly slips away, there is no  real incentive for them to continue
> compiling the rest of the distribution for anything less than i686
> compatibility.

In the medium/long term, there is no doubt that things will go the way
Colin describes: even ignoring RH strategies, one might cinically say
that the 386/486  PC problem will solve itself with time, since five
or ten years from now 95% of those PCs will have probably burn
themselves out in the meantime.

For the time being, however, I feel it's OK to stick with the
following points:

1) What said above is not a really big deal: RULE is by itself a moving
target, not only w.r.t RH versions, but also to HW. We want to
squeeze modern apps into old HW because we *need* them to work 24/7
until the transistor melt: when all 386/486 will be died of natural
causes, will work on squeezing RH 10.23 in those low end 2GHz Atlons
with only 1 GB of RAM.... :-)

2) I want to stress that, even if I and other members of the project
need/want to stick to RH for any number of reasons, there is nothing
to prevent study/customization of other distros in RULE. As a matter
of fact (see my previous ramblings about libraries/dependencies/etc...)
it can be a great opportunity to learn and take the best wherever it
is. Example: if the RULE "Slackware team/subproject" goes, studies and
comes back saying "Hey, we managed to fit everything from the kernel
up to browsing/email/openoffice in a 200 MB hard disk" and provides 
the list of installed libraries/compile options, then the rest of us
can very easily take a look at the RPMs and purge them of
useless dependencies, or nag the RH packagers so *they* do it for
good.

It may even be that cleaning RPMs is faster in that way than just
studying them alone, I don't know

3) Summarizing: in RULE there are already several sub-projects,
despite the lack of official statements on the matter: miniconda,
slinky, the DAn tool.... whoever feels like working on slackware or
whatever else, raise your hand, say it loud, and do report as often as
possible about what you've found (contact me off list to discuss this,
if you think is faster, and then we'll report together the conclusion
here)

	Ciao,
		Marco Fioretti
 
  


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