> On 16. Oct 2020, at 21:48, Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> ... you have locked licenses for expensive old CAD software?
>> ... vendor has failed to keep their software up to date with operating
>> system releases ...
>> ... not Scientific Linux's fault.
>> 
> 
> Ah... the sound of Linux walking away from old-time Linux users...
> 
> To me it looks like "Linux people" play with python, wayland and systemd
> and ignore the needs of long time scientific and industrial linux users
> (places like TRIUMF live in both camps).
> 
> In my part of the universe, we have Altera Cyclone-I FPGA boards,
> the FPGA compiler is Altera Quartus (expensive CAD software),
> for sure, latest Altera Quartus is all up to date to run on latest Linux,
> but the last Quartus to support Cyclone-I FPGAs is 5 years old out of date
> and it will not be updated. But we still need to run it (or throw
> all Cyclone-I FPGA hardware into the dumpster).
> 
> So, a problem. For solution, what do we hear from the Linux side?
> 
> All these answers are not the same:
> 
> "here is the fix",
> "we will try to help you",
> "we tried to help, but failed, sorry",
> "it's too hard" and
> "not our fault/problem".
> 
> Is it "too hard" to provide a solution for the OP and for myself? How come
> RHEL/SL/CentOS-8 does not come preinstalled with a package
> to "boot an SL3/SL4/SL5/RHEL6/RHEL7 VM image now!". (Yes, we still have
> hardware that required an m68k crosscompiler that runs on SL4. We even have
> a physical machine for this, a dual 500 MHz Pentium-II tower).

Yes it's kind of sad. However, containers have been mentioned in this thread already, and they do scratch a lot of those itches in a very elegant and cheap way.

-- 
Stephan Wiesand
DESY -DV-
Platanenallee 6
15738 Zeuthen, Germany