Re: Bug#198158: architecture i386 isn't i386 anymore
We run lot of P100 and P233 with hostap to provide internet access to
our customers with 2.4Ghz wi-fi. And some customers have P200,233MMX as
firewalls/mail servers/proxy.
I think 386 boxes are really slow ... and the admins of that boxes
<again I THINK> have faster boxes to build specific packages.. but maybe
not ability to rebuild all base packages and apt/dpkg/libs itself.
But 486's DX (DX-50/DX2-66/DX4-100) and 586's are faster boxes to do
something with them .. and inexpensives to put in a roof of building ..
and being hit by storms =) .... and don't have another boxes to rebuild
all packages.
Just my 2 cents
[]'s
<I'm subscribed to this list .. but with another address ;o) >
On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 10:45, Stephen Stafford wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 03:28:02PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Stephen Stafford wrote:
> > > On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 02:25:52PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > > > What about perusing the INT 6 idea, and going all the way up to i686?
> > > While I support the removal of 386 support, I absolutely and strenuously
> > > object to going to 686. 686 isn't all that old at all (1997 IIRC), and I
> > > use a nunber of 4/586 machines still (I have one 486 which I use for
> > > embedded development and 3 P100 boxen which are used for various things like
> > > CVS server, gateway/firewall, testing various things).
> > Note that my idea was about patching the kernel that so the newer opcodes
> > would be emulated in software. Everything would still work even on a 386,
> > just slower -- and the speed decrease can be removed by running apt-build.
>
> I'm still not convinced. Your argument works just as well in reverse. If
> people running >=686 want to they are perfectly capable of building the
> packages to take advantage of it themselves, and FAR more able to afford the
> computrons to do so (recompiling most of a system on a 486 will never be my
> idea of fun...on (say) a 1GHz machine, it's far easier to do)
>
> I'm also still not convinced of the usefulness of these optinisations per
> architecture at non-high loads. I submit that a 486 is FAR more likely to
> be running at high load than a 1GHz machine. The 486 can far less afford
> the performance hit from emulating instructions in software than a 1GHz
> machine can by not having the small optimisations built by default.
>
> This basically comes down to "will a significant portion of our userbase
> suffer if we do this?" Personally I think the answer is "yes". You
> obviously have a different viewpoint here :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stephen
>
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