Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 2:34 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> 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. > >> Looking at the system call table in the kernel >> (arch/alpha/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl), we seem to support a >> specific subset that was required for a set of applications, and >> not much more. > > Yeah, it never supported arbitrary binaries, particularly since > there's often lots of other issues too with running things like that > (ie filesystem layout etc). It worked for normal fairly well behaved > stuff, but wasn't ever a full OSF/1 emulation environment. > > I _suspect_ nobody actually runs any OSF/1 binaries any more, but it > would obviously be good to verify that. Your argument that timeval > handling was broken _may_ be an indication of that (or may just mean > very few apps care). Does it count if I fire up an Alpha and run a few OSF/1 binaries right now? :-) -- Måns Rullgård
