Turns out that they have tons of PCI and VME based hardware in their LHC control plane that they still want to run on modern linux. Then it makes sense to go for a distro that still supports technologies that old.
Common industry approach is to isolate such machines in a closed network and have them run whatever ancient OS they need to have to operate the machinery. I remember I sold my old 386 machine to someone maintaining a manufacturing line in some factory ... because he needed the exact motherboard model I happened to have. Similar story here, it is cheaper for them to switch distros than to reinvent and redo all of their custom hardware on newer standards (PCIe etc).
Btw, their control room consoles are still on Alma with xfce.
Yup we are always on the lookout for HP Itanium hardware as spares for a 30 year old ERP system. I have tried virtualizing it with QEMU with some success but the old hardware is our preferred fix.
Since they specifically mentioned AlmaLinux, it's worth noting that AlmaLinux has a special x86_64 v2 variant that doesn't require v3-capable hardware. But the video presentation mentions CERN still has a bunch of v1 hardware they want to keep using, which apparently motivated the switch.
I still wonder at the comparative effort between switching distros vs. rebuilding AlmaLinux for x86_64 v1 (i.e., creating a revived Scientific Linux), but I'm sure they weighed that option.
pegasus | 19 hours ago
Turns out that they have tons of PCI and VME based hardware in their LHC control plane that they still want to run on modern linux. Then it makes sense to go for a distro that still supports technologies that old. Common industry approach is to isolate such machines in a closed network and have them run whatever ancient OS they need to have to operate the machinery. I remember I sold my old 386 machine to someone maintaining a manufacturing line in some factory ... because he needed the exact motherboard model I happened to have. Similar story here, it is cheaper for them to switch distros than to reinvent and redo all of their custom hardware on newer standards (PCIe etc).
Btw, their control room consoles are still on Alma with xfce.
stunder | 15 hours ago
Yup we are always on the lookout for HP Itanium hardware as spares for a 30 year old ERP system. I have tried virtualizing it with QEMU with some success but the old hardware is our preferred fix.
jaypatelani | 15 hours ago
I think NetBSD could have been better choice for older PCs
pegasus | 15 hours ago
Not when custom kernel drivers are involved ...
jaypatelani | 15 hours ago
Understood so they already had drivers for Linux kernel for those old pcs.
mxey | 11 hours ago
Why? It’s a much bigger change
mshroyer | 9 hours ago
Since they specifically mentioned AlmaLinux, it's worth noting that AlmaLinux has a special x86_64 v2 variant that doesn't require v3-capable hardware. But the video presentation mentions CERN still has a bunch of v1 hardware they want to keep using, which apparently motivated the switch.
I still wonder at the comparative effort between switching distros vs. rebuilding AlmaLinux for x86_64 v1 (i.e., creating a revived Scientific Linux), but I'm sure they weighed that option.