Dropping i686 support

dolby · 2012-08-26 04:45:35

I never thought that Allan was serious about this and i hope he's not, but it seems that Chakra beat him to it.

http://chakra-linux.org/news/index.php? … pport.html

With Chakra being a community distro, it is fully shaped by those who are actively working on its development. For a number of reasons explained in this news article The Chakra-Project team has decided, it is best for this project to focus from now on solely on x86_64.

Once again Arch comes second

graysky · 2012-08-26 08:52:43

Looks like about 30 % of Arch users [running pkgstats] are using i686.

blackout23 · 2012-08-26 09:38:43

Shouldn't that be moved to "Arch Discussion"?

I think quite a lot of the people using i686 packages have the hardware to run a 64 bit system. I thought for a long time that 2 GB would not be enough to meet the increased RAM requirements without swapping like crazy. But I can run Gnome 3 and Chromium with multiple tabs and 2-3 extra programs without running out of RAM. In fact I hardly hit 50% RAM usage. Part of why I used i686 in the past was because I was afraid of problems with wine and flashplugin. But now that i figured out WINEARCH that's not a problem anymore. Flash used to be a problem with 64 bit but that has changed too.

But what does "Dropping i686" mean in the end? At least for wine and sadly for skype (seriously why isn't that x86_64?) I have to pull some 32 bit stuff from multilib. Unless Microsoft stops hugging the past and people start writing 64 bit stuff for windows there will always be some 32 bit libs on my system for the two Windows Programms I use.

I think the first consumer CPUs that were 64 bit capable have been released in 2002. So unless your PC is +10 years old you should use x86_64.

Last edited by blackout23 (2012-08-26 14:08:33)

karol · 2012-08-26 11:05:30

blackout23 wrote:

I think the first consumer CPUs that were 64 bit capable have been released in 2002. So unless your PC is +10 years old you should use x86_64.

It's not like every CPU released after 2002 was 64-bit capable ...
If you have just 512 MB RAM, using 64-bit will be a waste.

wonder · 2012-08-26 11:18:59

we never said that we want to drop i686 support. we have in mind to loose the the requirements for signing off the packages.

karol · 2012-08-26 11:36:11

wonder wrote:

we never said that we want to drop i686 support. we have in mind to loose the the requirements for signing off the packages.

http://www.archlinux.org/news/dropping-i686-support/

once · 2012-08-26 11:56:19

karol wrote:

wonder wrote:
we never said that we want to drop i686 support. we have in mind to loose the the requirements for signing off the packages.
http://www.archlinux.org/news/dropping-i686-support/

that was 1st cool link ever

Shark · 2012-08-26 12:01:07

That news is 3 years old and it is quite interesting that i686 architecture is still fully supporting.

Any problems with KDE (x86_64) running on 2GB ram?

JHeaton · 2012-08-26 12:07:53

Shark wrote:

That news is 3 years old and it is quite interesting that i686 architecture is still fully supporting.

You should probably inspect the date of that news item a little more closely...

Shark · 2012-08-26 12:13:30

The date of news: 2009-04-01 - Thomas Bächler

EDIT. Aha. Ok. The news from the next day is denying the first one - fist april joke
http://www.archlinux.org/news/i686-supp … g-dropped/

Last edited by Shark (2012-08-26 12:17:11)

loafer · 2012-08-26 12:16:29

It was a good joke at the time though.

x33a · 2012-08-26 14:01:19

This decision suits chakra as kde needs decent amount of ram, even if we assume that most processors are 64-bit these days.

Such a decision is not suitable for arch, as can be seen from pkgstats data too.

Also, arch can be made to run on very weak machines (by todays standards). My p4 is 64 bit, but since I have only 1 GB ram, I stick to the i686 version and many users have such reasons to stick to the i686 version.

bernarcher · 2012-08-26 14:36:18

Moving to Arch Discussion.

AaronBP · 2012-08-26 15:25:43

wonder wrote:

we never said that we want to drop i686 support. we have in mind to loose the the requirements for signing off the packages.

That seems reasonable. How often does it come up that the i686 PKGBUILD needs to be different from the x86_64 package?

scjet · 2012-08-27 04:05:46

Yes, I'd say the OP's link pointing to the Chakkra article and their reason for going solely x86_64 is self-explanatory.
All new PC's/Laptops are 64-bit capable, and it's only a matter of time before the smaller netbooks, Handhelds,... reach 64-bit as well.

So ya, "Dropping i686 support" will be inevitable, and not questionable.
I know I won't miss it, + it'll leave more room for more important stuff, on the future Arch-Netinstall images, ...

Last edited by scjet (2012-08-27 04:13:40)

nomorewindows · 2012-08-28 01:14:03

There's too many 32-bit machines still perfectly in use and some only still have 36-bit physical memory addressing even if they are 64-bit.

Allan · 2012-08-28 03:46:57

dolby wrote:

I never thought that Allan was serious about this and i hope he's not

Why does no-one take me seriously...

I can almost definitely say that we will not be dropping i686 support anytime soon. There is (almost?) never anything i686 specific in a package, so it will build on i686 if it builds on x86_64.

The only thing that will happen is our i686 packages will become less tested. But given I can not remember an i686 specific bug, that should not matter.

I queried whether Chakra has struck i686 specific issues that needed tested. From the response, I infer their build system is stupid and so they actually do...

ngoonee · 2012-08-28 03:58:43

Allan wrote:

From the response, I infer their build system is stupid and so they actually do...

Respect other distros please.... whatever the (perceived or otherwise) facts =p

Awebb · 2012-08-28 05:50:09

This discussion reminds me of that one evening, when I was out in the park with my girlfriend and suddenly heard a guy farting. My girlfriend instinctively started arguing about farts, to the point where I had to promise twice not to fart like that, even though she should know my farts by now.

So, morale: Don't crap your pants, just because random strangers fart.

axs · 2012-08-28 07:01:58

karol wrote:

blackout23 wrote:
I think the first consumer CPUs that were 64 bit capable have been released in 2002. So unless your PC is +10 years old you should use x86_64.
It's not like every CPU released after 2002 was 64-bit capable.

Recent Atoms, for instance, aren't. Despite being released in 2012.

Allan · 2012-08-28 07:58:48

Allan wrote:

I queried whether Chakra has struck i686 specific issues that needed tested. From the response, I infer their build system is stupid and so they actually do...

Their gcc package says to report bugs to our tracker when it crashes. That allows me to be critical!

gm112 · 2012-08-28 22:53:17

This is probably annoying for package managers, but if you look at the stats, an overwhelming amount of users use multilib. And I know I rely on it for two things: pcsx2 and flash. Which.. if 32-bit support were dropped, it wouldn't be too damaging for me as both would probably support x64 by the time such a move were to happen anyways.

If it makes things easier for the package manager, then by all means go for it. We have the AUR for special-case situations where we need unsupported functionality. I may get backlash for this point, but it is true.. I mean, the AUR is pretty powerful in terms of adding stuff... to Arch. And I'm sure it wouldn't make a difference to the AUR maintainers anyways since most of the packages up there are both 64/32bit.

Now if we drop 32bit packages from Arch, can we please get a CLI-mode installer again and maybe proper support for "obscure"(or anything other than GRUB1) bootloaders? haha.

ngoonee · 2012-08-28 23:39:56

Allan wrote:

Allan wrote:
I queried whether Chakra has struck i686 specific issues that needed tested. From the response, I infer their build system is stupid and so they actually do...
Their gcc package says to report bugs to our tracker when it crashes. That allows me to be critical!

There's always a WONTFIX =p

abveritas · 2012-08-28 23:57:28

Allan wrote:

Allan wrote:
I queried whether Chakra has struck i686 specific issues that needed tested. From the response, I infer their build system is stupid and so they actually do...
Their gcc package says to report bugs to our tracker when it crashes. That allows me to be critical!

No idea how you found it needed to twist my words, but the HUMAN error is why Chakra tests all, (as is clearly an issue with the gcc error, explained to you before). We, at Chakra, believe were people work, it is only human mistakes will be made, that is why testing of all, not just x86_64 packages makes just common sense. None of the examples I mentioned have even remotely to do with the build-system, it is people making an honest mistake, and catching those before builds move to stable

ElderSnake · 2012-08-29 00:55:25

Okay I'll admit I run i686 even though my fairly modern Intel dual core machine is completely 64bit compatible.

The main reason I've been running it is because I have 3GB RAM and I wanted life with Wine and Flash to be as simple as possible as I had some headaches with 32bit libs once. Also I was under the impression with less than 4GB RAM that a 32bit OS would use a little bit less memory than 64bit, but it probably wouldn't matter even on 3GB.

However honestly if it was dropped I wouldn't really care, I ought to just buy more RAM anyway and the situation with Wine and Flash is probably not as bad now nowadays.

Last edited by ElderSnake (2012-08-29 00:56:00)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-08-26 04:45:35

Dropping i686 support

#2 2012-08-26 08:52:43

Re: Dropping i686 support

#3 2012-08-26 09:38:43

Re: Dropping i686 support

#4 2012-08-26 11:05:30

Re: Dropping i686 support

#5 2012-08-26 11:18:59

Re: Dropping i686 support

#6 2012-08-26 11:36:11

Re: Dropping i686 support

#7 2012-08-26 11:56:19

Re: Dropping i686 support

#8 2012-08-26 12:01:07

Re: Dropping i686 support

#9 2012-08-26 12:07:53

Re: Dropping i686 support

#10 2012-08-26 12:13:30

Re: Dropping i686 support

#11 2012-08-26 12:16:29

Re: Dropping i686 support

#12 2012-08-26 14:01:19

Re: Dropping i686 support

#13 2012-08-26 14:36:18

Re: Dropping i686 support

#14 2012-08-26 15:25:43

Re: Dropping i686 support

#15 2012-08-27 04:05:46

Re: Dropping i686 support

#16 2012-08-28 01:14:03

Re: Dropping i686 support

#17 2012-08-28 03:46:57

Re: Dropping i686 support

#18 2012-08-28 03:58:43

Re: Dropping i686 support

#19 2012-08-28 05:50:09

Re: Dropping i686 support

#20 2012-08-28 07:01:58

Re: Dropping i686 support

#21 2012-08-28 07:58:48

Re: Dropping i686 support

#22 2012-08-28 22:53:17

Re: Dropping i686 support

#23 2012-08-28 23:39:56

Re: Dropping i686 support

#24 2012-08-28 23:57:28

Re: Dropping i686 support

#25 2012-08-29 00:55:25

Re: Dropping i686 support

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