Subject: Re: Good news: no more begging for HW

From: [email-masked] (Larry McVoy)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 19:25:17 -0700

: I think the fairest way would be to publish all these
: requests on this forum and have the people who care (us)
: vote on who should get them.  I certainly don't want to
: be the fascist person who decides who gets what.

A nice facist is a good thing.  Voting assumes that everyone has enough info
which may or may not be the case.  I'd suggest that each person that wants
a machine fills out a little form that says

	who am i?

	what will i do w/ the machine?

	when will it be done?

--lm

---

From: Alex deVries <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 01:31:13 -0400 (EDT)

Although I've posted before, I'll fill out the 'form' for reference.
Excuse the verbosity.

> 	who am i?

Professionally, I'm a software engineer for IAC in Boston, MA, where I do
work with large databases.  I've also worked with TimeStep in Ottawa doing
VPN's and IPSEC, and NorTel/BNR doing very quirkly large scale revision
control tools. Lots of Unix and IP experience in this.

But, Linux experience comes from a project called EngSoc, which I started
and maintain almost solely at Carleton University in Ottawa two years ago. 
It provides full Linux access for 1,500 users on 20 machines in under
$8,000US annually. We have done a lot of hardware recovery, and, er,
creative implementations.

I've donated 30 hours a week maintaining and expanding the system for the
last two years, but it's time to move on to something newer, like
SGI-Linux. 

I have a lot of varied experience with Unices (Solaris, SunOS, Linux,
Net/FreeBSD, HPUX, OSx (oooh... SVR3 and BSD, in the same OS), Irix, etc)
and VMS, and the porting that goes along with it. 

So, clearly, I don't have nearly the experience that some people on the
list do with low level kernel authority (eg. Ralf, who must dream in MIPS 
assembler), but I am committed to this project and have been since I first
heard of it.

> 	what will i do w/ the machine?

Mostly, concentrate on userspace applications, although certainly I will
help test and debug kernels, gcc and libc. I'd like to concentrate on
porting all RPM's I can get my hands on, with a concentration on RedHat
4.2.

I'm also interested in getting an X server running smoothly on it, as well
as getting native file system support running well.

So far, my work has been on Mike's bogomips.ingenia.ca, but I can't do
much more without having physical access.

> 	when will it be done?

It depends. I suspect most of the common userland ports can be done over
three months, but there'll be subsequent releases, updates, etc.  I will
be happy when RedHat releases an official Linux/SGI CD.

- Alex