Raúl Porcel posted on Fri, 01 Aug 2014 10:52:21 +0200 as excerpted: > But almost all arches except amd64/x86/arm are getting less and less > popular: > > alpha: no new hardware in more than 8+ years > hppa: being phased out IIRC, and no new workstations > (ie, graphics/sound) in 5+ years > ia64: no new workstations in 10 years, new servers are expensive > ppc*: new workstations are expensive > sparc: no new workstations in 7+ years, new servers expensive > > One of the reasons they are being killed, IMHO, its that the power > consumption isn't worth, and an amd64 machine is pretty much more > powerful, has more cores, and cheaper and has a lot less power > consumption.
While to nowhere near the same degree, I'd suggest x86 (32-bit) is getting less popular now too, at least for gentoo with our focus on end- user software building. It'll certainly be awhile before it's in the minor-arch camp, but amd64 definitely has the mainline focus now and if x86 installs are keeping up with retirements I'd be very surprised. Amd64 is probably maintaining but I doubt it's increasing much. In terms of usage, tho for different reasons I guess arm is about where amd64 was when I switched to it in 2003, and to gentoo a few months later in early 2004 -- in gentoo they could be challenging x86 for #2 in a few years tho I'm not ready to predict they'll challenge amd64 any time soon. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
