On 6/10/25 5:26 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > ... > On m68k, on the other hand, the user base is so small and insignificant > that the costs for introducing the change are negligible and the profits > for making the change strongly outweigh the disadvantages. > ... As part of that "small and insignificant" user community, I can say that making things too complicated or difficult will be detrimental, especially affecting new users.
Look at it from the perspective of a new user today on m68k systems. I still remember the joy of being able to get a Linux 2.x kernel working in Debian 3 on an ancient Mac IIci or SE/30. Now as the complexity grows, I can't do much of anything useful with an old m68k Mac other than log in (text only), edit a few files and download a few things from the public Internet. Almost everything related to an end-user's updates of a Debian or Gentoo distribution has to be done in QEMU or cross-compiled. Users don't want to be berated or invited to feel bad or lazy for wanting old things (e.g. mac-fdisk or dump/restore) to continue working on old systems, or for wanting old programs to continue to work. Treating users well, even if they aren't as good at programming as you are, will make them want to be part of your team, not just part of an insignificant user base of a product that you provide.
