On 14/02/2011 13:11, Bastian Blank wrote:
Are there any changes we could/should make to the 486 flavour that would make it perform better on 686-class processors? Should we consider also dropping 486 support and making it a 586 flavour with corresponding optimisations?The 486 flavour have only 8% of the usage of the 686 and steadily dropping. Which CPU types would be affected?
Yes, but if you decide to drop the 686-non-pae flavour, you should expect 486 raising. For example my notebook use a Pentium M Dothan without pae support. :-(
But please, don't raise too much the system request of the basic 486 kernel: Debian's kernel is one of the few that i can run on very old cpus. For example i've many K6-2 cpu that cannot run many live-CDs because they need cmov support. Debian-live works good. Switching from 486 to 586 i see the risk to cut out old hardware that is still able to use Debian.
Ciao. Cesare.