Re: [PATCH 6.6 0000/1226] 6.6.145-rc2 review

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 02:21:28PM +0200, Frank Scheiner wrote:
> On 23.07.26 09:46, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 07:25:26PM +0200, Frank Scheiner wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> In our fork of Linux post v6.6 we carry a replay of b4b1ddc that makes
> >> the corresponding changes also for ia64. This is available on [3] (and
> >> also attached to this message) and fixes the build for me.
> >>
> >> [3]: https://github.com/linux-ia64/linux-ia64/commit/a4085ca68e49f49f962ddff46a901ff3468574b8.patch
> >>
> >> Can this be included for linux-6.6.y, so it continues to build for
> >> ia64 as is?
> > 
> > Sure, I'll queue it up.
> 
> Thanks a lot. That should fix our builds.
> 
> > Does anyone still actually use ia64 anymore?  I
> > thought those systems were long dead.
> 
> Dead, no, not at all, maybe left for dead before we took over in 2023.
> But still there were always people taking care of it in the years before
> - keeping it alive for us. Much obliged for that. And today things look
> vastly different compared to 2023. Tomas already mentioned a few things,
> but let me add a few more:
> 
> Today we have it all: distributions that support ia64 (T2, EPIC Slack,
> Afterglow), hardware and simulator support restored, software support
> restored (e.g. Ruby, compilers and more, other things maybe only a
> session with an LLM away), Tomas doing all sorts of optimization work
> that wasn't done in years, other devs bringing in patches for various
> bits of the ecosystem. And just recently out of nowhere ia64 emulators
> popped up, one of it being QEMU based ([1]), currently emulating an
> Itanium 2 system, with MP support and already working well enough for
> MP package builds. There is now even another emulator that tries to
> recreate a Merced based system ([2]).
> 
> [1]: https://github.com/syunnPC/qemu-system-ia64/
> 
> [2]: https://github.com/hotlandsoftware/gemu/
> 
> Please excuse my optimism here, but emulators with MP support will
> bring in a lot more people, the scarce hardware failed to bring in so
> far.
> 
> Of course we are hobbyists, we're doing it for the fun of it. If you
> want to learn more, please head over to:
> 
> https://epic-linux.org/

Cool, but what happens when these last kernels with support for the
platform goes end-of-life?  While running things in emulators is fun,
how will future userspace code that needs newer kernel features ever be
possible?

thanks,

greg k-h