I share a lot of @PulkoMandy’s concerns but I’d like to bring up one thing: getting older hardware to be supported is a real challenge. I’d bet there isn’t a lot of overlap between the people who know how to program the older systems and the ones who wish to keep the older system running. Low-level bits for boot-loaders and hardware-specific needs for an OS (and other projects) for old hardware is a really niche thing. Besides Haiku, I’ve seen other LLM work to get things like modern Firefox and other apps running on Classic Mac OS and PowerPC Macs. Sure, there are some LLM concerns, but the end result could mean more reasons for people to hold on to those systems and spare them from being sent to the dump to become e-waste. Maybe that tips the scales a little bit when it comes to economical and environmental concerns.
Otherwise, I’m amazed as the progress done recently to get Haiku booting on PowerPC (and ARM)! This is awesome and I hope that the code can be contributed. Perhaps with the help of others to ensure that a clean git history is maintained, that the code is maintainable and intelligible.
Maybe I’m just silly but it would be neat to have some additional platforms and re-visit the Fat ELF discussion.