On Mon, 2024-05-20 at 13:39 +0200, Ansgar 🙀 wrote: > Hi, > > On Sun, 2024-05-19 at 10:30 -0500, rhys@neoquasar.org wrote: > > I have an N270 system I can use to contribute, if someone is willing > > to explain what I need to do to make it useful. > > > > From: Victor Gamper <victor@wenzeslaus.de> > > Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2024 08:03 > > To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org > > Subject: Re: About i386 support > > > > I believe I could swap out the processor on my T60, > > however, I'd both need to have that processor and > > make sure that it is actually possible. It still would > > not really make sense on a platform that only supports > > 3G of physical RAM. > > > > Anyways, if the only reason why i386 cd images are not > > supported anymore is the lack of contributors, > > I'd be willing to contribute in that area, if it's possible. > > If you look at https://release.debian.org/testing/arch_qualify.html > there is at least several things that can be done: > > 1. Add CPU security mitigations to Linux kernel. With few exceptions, the CPU security issues that have been discovered in tha past few years are not thought to affect 32-bit-only CPUs. (Meltdown did affect some of them but was eventually mitigated on i386.) I have raised the possibility of making i386 kernel builds warn very loudly or refuse to boot on 64-bit-capable hardware, but didn't try implementing it yet. [...] > 3. Look at other arch-specific issues (porter); this can also include > baseline violations and other issues for real i386 hardware. [...] There is a tension here between the interests of (a) users that want to run proprietary i386 binaries on 64-bit CPUs, and (b) those who want to keep using 32-bit CPUs. If i386 is meant for group (a) then the baseline should be raised to include the features that 64-bit CPUs provide, but if it's also for group (b) then this mustn't happen. This also showed up in the 64-bit time_t transition, where the transition would be desirable for group (b) but would make i386 useless for group (a). There was some talk then about creating a new port like "i386t64" for use by group (b), while i386 would serve group (a) only. Did anything come of this? Ben. -- Ben Hutchings I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
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