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Re: Defaulting to i686 for the Debian i386 architecture



Hi,

Matthias Klose wrote:
> question to the Hurd and KFreeBSD maintainers ... change that on
> these platforms too?

I have a fanatical preference for compatibility over performance.  So
I prefer not to lose support for 586, but I don't know how practical
it would be for libc maintainers to do that only for kfreebsd.

kfreebsd-i386 has 686 (with SMP) and 486 kernel flavours.

If maybe package libc0.1-i686 had to go away, then I'd still prefer we
target 586 by default.  (For some reason, the kfreebsd installer is
failing to install that package when it should;  I forgot to install it
on all my 686s).

I'd be curious to see numbers showing the performance impact, though.

I have some of these around for testing on;  I think this device was
manufactured as 'recently' as 2006.  It is similar to the Soekris which
can still be purchased new:

    cpu0: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi ("Geode by NSC" 586-class) 333 MHz
    cpu0: FPU,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,CX8,PGE,CMOV,MMX,MMXX,3DNOW2,3DNOW

kfreebsd-i386's particular niche is supporting ancient platforms like
these and making them still useful.  And that would be especially
important to me, if Debian GNU/Linux (and Ubuntu, Fedora etc.) no longer
worked on them.

Regards,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven@pyro.eu.org

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