On 2014-10-30 19:04, Timothy Butterworth wrote:
On 10/29/2014 04:50 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
What scares me is that devs want to pull the plug on 32 bits.
+1 I personally would not mind seeing some old architectures dropped say
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Anton Aylward <> wrote: like everything below Pentium 4 or Intel Core II Duo as a start then optimizing the 32 bit kernel for the newer processors but at least it is no longer optimized for i386 anymore.
I also would like the i386 target be dropped and switched to the i686 target instead. But. There are some AMD processors that do not support all the instructions of the P-IV (MMS?) and break down. There have been recent reports about that. Then I think that there are some modern low powered CPUs that are 32 bit, being sold in some laptops recently. I saw a post not long ago about one, but we did not clarify fully if it was really 32 bit CPU or if it had some other limitation instead. Like a 32 bit memory path :-? There were doubts, but the OP did not comment back. I have an Intel tablet of unknown (to me) CPU. Maybe it is 32 bit, would not surprise me. In virtualization, it aparently makes sense to provide virtual 32 bit machines instead of 64, even if the host hardware is 64 bit. Apparently they use less resources. But this could use a way more modern variant that the P-IV.
32 bit will eventually go away, I do not know why anyone would want to keep using a P4 with 1GB of Ram when they could upgrade to a much better system at a very low cost like a Core II Duo for example.
Because we already have the hardware and it costs money to replace it!
Old computers do not need to be land fill they can be recycled for the valuable metals they contain.
Oh, yes. In some village in China or Africa, where people wearing paper masks on mouth for /protection/ and nose burn the plastics in open fires, close to a river, to get the metal, and similar low tech and dangerous /recycling/ technologies. It is documented. Please! :-( -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)