Re: real-i386 (was Re: i386 requalification for etch)
Em Qui, 2005-11-03 às 21:39 +0200, Yavor Doganov escreveu:
> At Thu, 3 Nov 2005 02:38:51 -0800 (PST), Nick Jacobs wrote:
> > You mean, it's seriously been proposed that a significant amount of
> > work should be done to restore support for a processor that has not
> > been manufactured for 10 years? While slightly degrading performance
> > for the 99.99999% of x86 users who have Pentium/Athlon/or better?
> Why not supporting it, if it is not so hard?
I think i386 debian arch is not suitable anymore for real-i386 machines
(self-experience), I mean, it's not suitable even for a Pentium 133 with
32 Mb RAM. Ok, I know it works, but it's a waste of memory and CPU
cycles to run a full glibc-based distro in such restrictive
environment...
> This is important for the small hobbits that love to tinker old
> hardware. I have 2 i386 machines and I don't plan to throw them
> away. I am quite confident that the users of powerful and shiny new
> machines won't suffer much.
That applies to me. I have a 486 laptop (ok, its support wasn't
discontinued) and I'd really love to see debian in it. But it's just not
good enough.
IMHO, the debian x86 arch (currently i386, which is a naming error),
could be promoted even to newer a newer hardware (I don't know much on
this stuff, so I really don't have a clue if using i686 would break
compatibility with other CPUs).
Now, trying to sell my fish[1], I think uclibc-based architectures could
address this problem much better than the regular x86 debian. Currently,
I'm naming it i386-uclibc, but we could see a future where the current
i386 is renamed to i[456]86 and i386-uclibc renamed to i386.
So, I would state it as: "Want your 386/486/pentium I running Debian?
help the i386-uclibc port" :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
daniel
[1] The effort on the i386-uclibc port is hosted at
http://alioth.debian.org/projects/i386-uclibc
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