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Debian Dropping Support For Older CPUs (distrowatch.com)
An anonymous reader shares DistroWatch's report that the Debian distribution will soon be dropping support for older, 32-bit processors.
The Debian project supports a wide range of hardware architectures, including 32-bit x86 CPUs. Changes are happening in Debian's development branches which will make older versions of the 32-bit architecture obsolete. Ben Hutchings provides the details:
"Last year it was decided to increase the minimum CPU features for the i386 architecture to 686-class in the Stretch release cycle. This means dropping support for 586-class and hybrid 586/686 processors. (Support for 486-class processors was dropped, somewhat accidentally, in Squeeze.) This was implemented in the Linux kernel packages starting with Linux 4.3, which was uploaded to Unstable in December last year. In case you missed that change, GCC for i386 has recently been changed to target 686-class processors and is generating code that will crash on other processors. Any such systems still running Testing or Unstable will need to be switched to run Stable (Jessie)." Hutching's announcement includes a list of processors which will no longer be supported after Debian "Jessie".
The Debian project supports a wide range of hardware architectures, including 32-bit x86 CPUs. Changes are happening in Debian's development branches which will make older versions of the 32-bit architecture obsolete. Ben Hutchings provides the details:
"Last year it was decided to increase the minimum CPU features for the i386 architecture to 686-class in the Stretch release cycle. This means dropping support for 586-class and hybrid 586/686 processors. (Support for 486-class processors was dropped, somewhat accidentally, in Squeeze.) This was implemented in the Linux kernel packages starting with Linux 4.3, which was uploaded to Unstable in December last year. In case you missed that change, GCC for i386 has recently been changed to target 686-class processors and is generating code that will crash on other processors. Any such systems still running Testing or Unstable will need to be switched to run Stable (Jessie)." Hutching's announcement includes a list of processors which will no longer be supported after Debian "Jessie".
The processors they are dropping support for, according to the mailing list, are approximately from the Windows 95 era of computing.... AMD K6 ( a tad newer ) and Intel Pentium / Pentium W/ MMX. That's Win9.x era hardware that even if you could get XP to boot on, it wouldn't be a fun experience.
Frankly I don't know how anyone is still running a usable system on that ancient of hardware without custom tuning the hell out of their kernel and applications anyway, as those systems had extremely small amounts of RAM.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
While I prefer the way my lawn used to be as well, I can't really fault distributions dropping support for 20 year old hardware. Every year there's new hardware you have to support and developers and maintainers have to spend their time wisely. So, you have 20 year old hardware? You'll just have to use old packages, or fiddle with the source to build your own. Even the kernel as of 3.7 dropped i386. Why? Well, it was a massive pain to maintain, and people running 30 year old hardware are probably fine running old versions of the kernel. There's not much to see here. Most commercial developers have 10 year support cycles - were taking about 20 year old hardware here.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
No need to run the latest distributions on a POS terminal. Just get an older one.
"It's difficult to imagine that that processor still has the grunt to run an OS these days."
What, did you forget that pretty much everything you're doing RIGHT NOW is exactly the same stuff you were doing back on Windows 95/98? Playing games, surfing the web, watching videos (not streamed, usually from VCD or DVD) and maybe getting some work done.
Nothing has changed. People just got shitty at programming.
MenuetOS shows this off quite well. It does everything. Even runs Quake. Full GUI, supports all kinds of shit.
1.4 Megabytes.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
And then deal with the fact that the versions are EOL and you're running without patches.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Maintaining useless old CPU architectures costs time and money. Given you can buy a Pentium 4 class CPU for $3 (or a quad core 2.8GHz i7 for $50), and a good developer's time is easily worth $100 per hour, it just plain doesn't make sense to support 20+ year old Intel chips.
If you believe differently, well - GCC is an open source project. How much are you paying to use it? Support it yourself, or spend $100 and get a new i686 capable computer.
Debian Dropping Support For Older CPUs
It doesn't say anything about 32 bit or i686 in the headline. Just says older cpus.
And in the first line of the story it says "An anonymous reader shares DistroWatch's report that the Debian distribution will soon be dropping support for older, 32-bit processors." Perhaps the comma after "older" should have been left out, so that it was clear that it meant "those 32-bit processors that are older", as in "pre-P6", rather than "those older processors - you know, the 32-bit ones".
jesus christ.. in every single one of your posts on this topic, you have fucked up some version of they're, their, and there.
In fact, you haven't used the proper spelling for the word you have used A SINGLE TIME.
I was having a conversation with another IT Manager friend of mine and he expressed that he would "have to test for 64-bit Windows" at his site now.
My jaw hit the floor. I mean, seriously? Granted, we both work in schools so the clients aren't exactly beefy, but the amount of use they get and they hadn't gone past 4Gb (or likely even TO 4Gb properly!) or onto 64-bit operating systems? And at no point had bothered to say "I wonder if these machines I'm intending to use for the next 4 years will actually support 64-bit versions of our software that I will no doubt need to rollout in the future?"
And the guy had some kind of fixation with printer drivers on 64-bit. There I was thinking "Well, if your managed print providers can't handle a '64-bit compatible' printer driver in this day and age, maybe it's time to look for a new one"
I was pushing out 64-bit Windows years ago, and the only "problems" I ever had are that basically you have to push 32-bit Office for best results, but that will change with Office 2016 rollouts no doubt.
On Linux, I don't even look but I'm fairly sure the default is 64-bit for just about anything vaguely recent (Ubuntu LTS from about, what, at least 10.04 or before has had 64-bit?). I know I've had to install the 32-bit libs on Ubuntu more than once over the last five years or so, for certain programs.
I hate to see support for old hardware dropped, as much as anyone. I tinker with old junk, especially the junk that my workplace can't make use of any more. But, come on. 64-bit? You MUST at least have checked compatibility and taken it into account when purchasing by now.
You SHOULD at least have migrated to 64-bit everywhere practical already (yes, I still have 32-bit devices, but they are thin-clients, or used for things like digital signage and thus I just don't care as they aren't critical and are easily replaced if I need to).
And if you've not done this already, this article and maybe the other comments here are the kick in the teeth that you need to do that.
Especially with 32-bit now instruction sets - how the hell have you been virtualising your stuff with only 4Gb RAM? Or are you not even there yet either? And if you ARE stuck with 32-bit on hardware / operating systems that need 64-bit, guess what technology you need to look into? Virtualisation.
Honestly guys, I have about 5% of my client stock that can't do more than 4Gb RAM because of motherboard limitations but even they support 64-bit operating systems and instructions as a matter of course.
For a desktop-focus operating systems, 64-bit should have been the default for, what? Nearly a decade? I'm not sure, it's so long ago that I needed to worry about it.
But you're not using a 30 year old system in production are you?
I'd wager the only place you'll find a 30 year old system is in production.