Gentoo Linux Touts Better MIPS & Alpha Platform Support

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  • phoronix
    Administrator
    • Jan 2007
    • 67377

    Gentoo Linux Touts Better MIPS & Alpha Platform Support

    Phoronix: Gentoo Linux Touts Better MIPS & Alpha Platform Support

    While Gentoo Linux recently ended their support for Itanium (IA-64) hardware, this popular source-based Linux distribution continues to support other aging platforms... Today they sent out an announcement highlighting their improved support for MIPS and Alpha based hardware...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite
  • ezst036
    Senior Member
    • Feb 2018
    • 681

    #2
    As long as they got dedicated maintainers, sounds good to me.

    Comment

    • Adarion
      Senior Member
      • Mar 2009
      • 2064

      #3
      I often wonder if NetBSD still supports more things than (Gentoo) Linux. Gentoo means a bunch of work for the user, but it is really flexible ("LFS for the lazy").
      Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

      Comment

      • cakeisamadeupdrug
        Phoronix Member
        • Apr 2024
        • 51

        #4
        Asking out of complete ignorance here, but isn't one of the benefits of a source-based distro that it intrinsically supports more or less any architecture you can compile for?

        Comment

        • Serafean
          Senior Member
          • Dec 2011
          • 614

          #5
          Originally posted by cakeisamadeupdrug View Post
          Asking out of complete ignorance here, but isn't one of the benefits of a source-based distro that it intrinsically supports more or less any architecture you can compile for?
          Yes, but a "supported" architecture is guaranteed* to work by the maintainers, and you will get help in case you find bugs.
          Of course you can set up shop on any architecture, and start compiling, but you're likely to hit bugs, and you're the one who'll have to dig through build systems and code to fix architecture specific bugs (while not breaking other archs).

          edit: forgot to specify the *
          * guaranteed as much as can be by volunteers.
          Last edited by Serafean; 12 September 2024, 05:50 AM.

          Comment

          • kpedersen
            Senior Member
            • Jul 2012
            • 2712

            #6
            Originally posted by Adarion View Post
            I often wonder if NetBSD still supports more things than (Gentoo) Linux.
            It supports more architectures than any (single) Linux distro. However, many of the NetBSD ports are quite incomplete.

            The Linux ecosystem overall has the wider platform support these days but only if you start chasing around with custom distros and BSPs.

            Comment

            • DMJC
              Senior Member
              • Mar 2009
              • 594

              #7
              Oh the delicious Irony, SGI killed MIPS in favour of Itanium and now Gentoo kills Itanium and keeps MIPS alive.

              Comment

              • Akiko
                Phoronix Member
                • Sep 2017
                • 69

                #8
                Originally posted by Adarion View Post
                I often wonder if NetBSD still supports more things than (Gentoo) Linux. Gentoo means a bunch of work for the user, but it is really flexible ("LFS for the lazy").
                Well, I got a AlphaStation XP1000 here (AXP 21264/666MHz), using NetBSD on this one is really no fun. And today it is really hard to get a modern Linux for this, so I really really really appreciate this. I already ended up trying to build an usable Linux using Yocto...

                Comment

                • alpha_one_x86
                  Senior Member
                  • Apr 2009
                  • 156

                  #9
                  Good news for me, I need it for my MIPS hardware, new chip for GPON remain with MIPS arch.
                  Developer of Ultracopier/CatchChallenger and CEO of Confiared

                  Comment

                  • arjan_intel
                    Intel
                    • Mar 2009
                    • 207

                    #10
                    Originally posted by cakeisamadeupdrug View Post
                    Asking out of complete ignorance here, but isn't one of the benefits of a source-based distro that it intrinsically supports more or less any architecture you can compile for?
                    that sounds easy right -- but it's in practice a lot harder. For example for the kernel.. are you (as distro) providing config files (even as starting point for customization) that will at least boot and have all the basics set that your user space needs. Are you providing a bootloader (which is per architecture usually, grub is x86 only more or less).
                    Likewise for the compiler itself, are you providing a config that generates a working compiler.
                    Beyond that it's mostly on the "bugfix" level, do you provide special things throughout the stack that make it work.
                    Of course, one can do all of these by hand --- just like you could make a whole distro by hand. Gentoo is Gentoo in part for all these things it provides by default so that it is not as hard as making your own distro to still customize and compile

                    Oh and then there is of course the bootstrap part -- it's fine to compile, say, gcc from scratch. But where does the compiler run that compiles gcc? Ideally you (as user) would like that to be on your machine right? So you need to provide some minimal set of "start binaries" so you can at least compiler a compiler

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