At least with regards to Mesa the decision to require SSE2 has been an decision by intention. ;-)
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/9868
[...] What does this mean for users? On Linux raises the default minimum processor spec to SSE2 supporting CPUs
Intel requirements raise from P5 (1993) to Netburst (2000) AMD requirements raise from Athlon(1999/2000) to Athlon 64 (2003) Via requirements raise from C3(2001) to C7 (2005) I think the choice for SSE2 is not a very great one. From performance
On Mon, 2 May 2022 11:54:23 +0200 Stefan Dirsch wrote: point of view Athlon XP CPUs are still sufficient for many tasks. Especially for compiled code I think it makes not much sense to require SSE2. Hand crafted assembler code would be a different story.
[...]
I think there was another component/tool, which requires SSE2 now? Was it rust? I can't remember. I think it was something, which has been invented long after SSE2 was avaialble ... a very early problem was the openssl FIPS check - which can be avoided. https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1032165
other pieces are Chromium and Qt Webengine: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1183493#c1 Apart from these limitations, current Tumbleweed still works sufficiently on an Athlon XP with a Matrox video card using the kernel parameter: iomem=relaxed Kind regards, Dieter