Old UNIX Systems

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 8:04 PM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: I used to run Sun gear all the time at home. I just don't power it up anymore, so the strict answer to your question is "keeping the shelves from being empty". At one time, old Sun gear was a great gateway to learning "real" Unix and a foot in the door for a "real" job. It's been far, far less true for coming up on 10 years. And then, around 4 years ago, give or take, if the job postings said "Solaris experience required", it was Solaris 10 or nothing, something you can't do with SPARC hardware from the 1980s. I've turned down more free Sun hardware in the past 2 years than I've kept. It's still elegant, and it still runs DNS and web servers, and plenty of other things, but I personally don't care to spend that much on electricity for those sorts of services at the bandwidths I require - an old laptop running Linux can do everything I "need" at home in the way of services and suck up 90W or less. I also have VAXen that I only turn on for special occasions - too hungry to leave powered on all the time like we used to do back in the day. Of course, in the winter, it's "electric heat", so no harm there, but it's summer up here now, so most of that stuff stays off except for a few hours here and there. -ethan