[1527] in netbsd-help mailing list archive
Re: NetBSD/Athena
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nathan J. Williams)
Wed Jun 25 17:42:09 2003
To: "Erik E. Fair" <fair@netbsd.org>
Cc: netbsd-help@MIT.EDU
From: nathanw@MIT.EDU (Nathan J. Williams)
Date: 25 Jun 2003 17:42:06 -0400
In-Reply-To: <22580.1056575994@cesium.clock.org>
[Ye gods, the first mail to this list in over a year that isn't spam.]
"Erik E. Fair" <fair@netbsd.org> writes:
> "NetBSD-Athena was de-supported in May of 2001. It is no longer
> recommended that you install it."
>
> Why is that?
Nobody had worked on it since 1999. The note was put up in 2001 to
prevent people from hurting themselves with the then rather old
software.
As to why nobody had worked on it.... it was never as popular as
SIPB's Linux-Athena port, and the critical mass of students who were
interested in NetBSD had moved on.
Also, the original reason for the existence of SIPB's NetBSD- and
Linux-Athena projects was to provide the Athena software and
environment on student's increasingly common i386 systems at a time
when the official Athena environment ran on more expensive
workstations (Sun and SGI boxes then). When MIT I/S decided to
officially port and maintain Athena on Linux, much of the motivation
for student volunteers to maintain a parallel version evaporated.
- Nathan
