Mold Linker Decides To Drop DEC Alpha Support: Likely Broken & No Actual Users

[NateHubbard]

Ahem, I am using it on m68k, and several of us donated to get that support in.

And he even mentioned m68k as one that actually has users.
I do wonder though, as someone that briefly tried running Linux on an m68k Mac way back in the day, just what exactly are you using it for? I remember it being unbelievably slow compared to my AMD K6 at the time. Do you have some sort of X desktop running on it, just for fun?

[dragorth]

And he even mentioned m68k as one that actually has users.
I do wonder though, as someone that briefly tried running Linux on an m68k Mac way back in the day, just what exactly are you using it for? I remember it being unbelievably slow compared to my AMD K6 at the time. Do you have some sort of X desktop running on it, just for fun?

Not him, but there is a current version of Debian that runs on Amiga, as well as a current versions of BSDs, such as NetBSD that run on it, with X servers, yes. There is a whole retro community that is just focused on Amiga.

Having a full Distro working on it means you have extensive testing for the compiler, which is a little self referential for this thread, but people forget these CPUs are still produced and sold for things like peripherals and other niche tools.

[Vistaus]

Not him, but there is a current version of Debian that runs on Amiga, as well as a current versions of BSDs, such as NetBSD that run on it, with X servers, yes. There is a whole retro community that is just focused on Amiga.

Having a full Distro working on it means you have extensive testing for the compiler, which is a little self referential for this thread, but people forget these CPUs are still produced and sold for things like peripherals and other niche tools.

And not just that: you can run a nested X server on AmigaOS 4 as well, not to mention Qt apps without said nested server.

[EmptyMenagerie]

Oh, no! Next thing, I'll discover they removed support for Z80 as well

Until folks stop using TI-84s, you're going to be fine using that ISA. I do find it ironic that it's the old 64-bit platforms that are getting dropped before some of the 8 and 16-bit ones, but the embedded world likes those smaller architectures when it's not running ARM. MIPS will live forever in routers and switches, perpetually annoying folks who ask "why do you keep trying to shave off a few hundred kilobytes from certain binaries?"

[thomasjkenney]

"OOOHH-WOOAAHH BREAK IT!!! Take another little piece of my heart, now, babay!!!"

IIRC, Alpha as early 64 had some compromises, especially having to use spinlocks for some operations that on a VAX were true async. I know one person and one large company who would likely have some Alphas on-site. They probably wouldn't be running Linux, though.

[hotaru]

Like, nobody is running Linux 6.11 and using Mold on a DEC Alpha because it's literally not powerful enough to do so, and yet here we are with "support" for the architecture.

not using Mold, but...

$ uname -mrs
Linux 6.11.0 alpha
$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux trixie/sid"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_CODENAME=trixie
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

_{$ cat /proc/cpuinfo|grep 'system type'
system type : QEMU}

[uid313]

What exactly is your problem with s390x? Or... literally any of these, tbh?

I feel like we don't need all these architectures. What is it good for, have all these niche architectures? That is just division and scattered resources. It is better to streamline things and get rid of all these niche architectures and just keep the major ones like x86, ARM and RISC-V. Less is more.

[hotaru]

It is better to streamline things and get rid of all these niche architectures and just keep the major ones like x86, ARM and RISC-V. Less is more.

realistically, the list of major ones right now would be:

• x86
• POWER
• ARM
• MIPS

hopefully RISC-V will replace MIPS and ARM within a few years, so we can narrow that list down to 3, but it'll have to go up to 5 (by adding RISC-V) before that happens.

[Chewi]

And he even mentioned m68k as one that actually has users.
I do wonder though, as someone that briefly tried running Linux on an m68k Mac way back in the day, just what exactly are you using it for? I remember it being unbelievably slow compared to my AMD K6 at the time. Do you have some sort of X desktop running on it, just for fun?

I'm the Gentoo m68k maintainer. I have had Xorg running under QEMU. My Amiga 1200 isn't quite up to that, but it does run a basic Gentoo system relatively well. I'm hoping to see what I can do with a PiStorm in the mix. Yeah, it's just for fun, but hey, I do more than enough open source work to justify it.

[Dawn]

I feel like we don't need all these architectures. What is it good for, have all these niche architectures? That is just division and scattered resources. It is better to streamline things and get rid of all these niche architectures and just keep the major ones like x86, ARM and RISC-V. Less is more.

Essentially the entire global financial industry runs on s390x. Z outsells Power by a lot.