On Mon, Nov 3, 2025 at 12:35 AM Jan-Daniel Kaplanski <[email protected]> wrote: > That said, 20 year old hardware that is still in-use today by a reasonably > large amount of users isn't something I'd consider ancient or retro.
Yes, 20 year old hardware is looking ancient and retro. There seem to be four architectures at issue: Alpha, HPPA, m68k and SH4. There is no practical reason to use Linux on any of those instead of a Raspberry Pi; a Pi 5 soundly beats any of those systems ever made. SH4 (Dreamcast) and m68k are reasonably available, but Alpha and HPPA always had limited availability. > It feels like the movement to introduce Rust everywhere is more because Rust > has become such a buzzword that everyone must use it now and less because of > the capabilities of Rust. Not to throw shade, but if the only benefit is > memory safety you might as well do a rewrite in any other memory safe > language that provides I/O access (e.g. Haskell) instead. The developer has decided to do a rewrite in Rust instead of some other memory safe language. There are certain advantages to going with the language more people know and use. Part of it is that systems that don't support Rust are going to be less and less capable of using modern software. (For a counter example, look at CVSup, written in Modula-3. An essential tool in FreeBSD, it was rewritten in C, because while Modula-3 is a nice language, it's also a dead one.) -- The standard is written in English . If you have trouble understanding a particular section, read it again and again and again . . . Sit up straight. Eat your vegetables. Do not mumble. -- _Pascal_, ISO 7185 (1991)
