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From:   Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Date:   Tue, 12 Mar 2019 09:44:34 +0100
Message-ID: <CAMuHMdU76V=p8GLqVdChx+Sa_aPZ9BMCnnzmzWonqEq4Xe+LEQ@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: Deprecate a.out support
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
        =?UTF-8?B?TcOlbnMgUnVsbGfDpXJk?= <mans@mansr.com>,
        Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
        Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
        "the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@kernel.org>,
        Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>,
        Anton Ivanov <anton.ivanov@cambridgegreys.com>,
        linux-alpha <linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org>,
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On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 10:46 PM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 2:34 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> > The main historic use case I've heard of was running Netscape
> > Navigator on Alpha Linux, before there was an open source version.
> > Doing this today to connect to the open internet is probably
> > a bit pointless, but there may be other use cases.
>
> The _really_ main version was that I decided to make my life easier
> for the initial alpha port by trying to run basic (tested) OSF/1
> binaries directly.
>
> Netscape may have been one of the binaries people actually ended up
> using, but it's probably not a reason any more, since the internet has
> moved past that anyway.

Yeah, the alphas on the server side, powering AltaVista, are also long
gone...

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds