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#26 2013-08-11 03:24:46

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Allan wrote:

And those third world countries can afford the internet connection and bandwidth required to keep an Arch install up-to-date?

Have you seen the state of broadband in my country?  It is disgraceful.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
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#27 2013-08-11 03:40:59

karol
Archivist
Registered: 2009-05-06
Posts: 25,440

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

ewaller wrote:
Allan wrote:

And those third world countries can afford the internet connection and bandwidth required to keep an Arch install up-to-date?

Have you seen the state of broadband in my country?  It is disgraceful.

+1
I wanted to reply to wstewart90 that the digital divide doesn't run along the same lines as GDPpc.
Still, US has at least cheap hardware + avg wage/hr is pretty high, so saving up that $300 for a new computer (assuming you currently use a 10yo machine so it is not possible to just upgrade it) is not that hard.

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#28 2013-08-11 08:12:55

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

What is the point here, beyond the "people may be able to afford cheap hardware but not decent internet" that I was making?

Anyway, given this thread is just a steaming pile of speculation, I will make my bold prediction.   Arch Linux will not drop i686 in the next five years.

I'm basing this on my attempt to try and set x86_64 as our primary architecture and downgrade i686 to a secondary architecture.  This would reflect reality given I think ~90% of packages for i686 make it into the repos without any testing given the very few developers that have an i686 system, and also set up a system for us to expand to other architectures. The overwhelming response was no, because building i686 in addition to x86_64 is almost no extra burden.

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#29 2013-08-11 09:13:56

Xyne
Administrator/PM
Registered: 2008-08-03
Posts: 6,963
Website

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

If there is an entire community out there with 32-bit hand-me-down hardware that really wants to run Arch after i686 loses official support, then there will be nothing stopping them from supporting i686 themselves. i586 and ARM exist without official support (although I think the former may have ceased), and I believe x86_64 started as an unofficial project that was later merged (as hopefully ARM will be, one day).

Official support in Arch just means that there are devs who work on it. While the devs are great and technically competent, there is no special dev sauce that gives them powers beyond the rest of us mere mortals (well, maybe the master keys do). Anyone can step up and do what they do (In Soviet FOSS, Arch develops you!). If you want your project to become official, then  you must show that it is popular and that you (and others) are technically able to support it. After that, you can probably start talks about bringing it under the official umbrella. With a little prodding, I'm sure Allan will be happy to break anything at least once.


My Arch Linux StuffForum EtiquetteCommunity Ethos - Arch is not for everyone

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#30 2013-08-11 09:23:21

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Xyne wrote:

With a little prodding, I'm sure Allan will be happy to break anything at least once.

No prodding necessary....

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#31 2013-08-22 03:02:43

DaveCode
Member
Registered: 2008-08-15
Posts: 103

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

It's nice to hear from Xyne and Allan whose 5-year prophecy was a relief. A few odd angles came to my own mind.

Before an architecture is dropped, solicit new devs to maintain it and see what happens. I would expect many volunteers for i686.

Think about sanity checking build/deployment too. Some things only hash out with N targets. Until a new architecture hits the market and demotes x86_64 to rank #2, keep i686.

The other angle was pimping old gear, which can sell Linux to Windows people. Very many have old hardware. Good tuning with tmpfs and a cheap SSD transforms an old box dramatically. Others will only try Linux on throwaway hardware. (If they can't install Linux solo, they have friends or teens who can.)

There's also WINE and VMs. Most Windows apps remain 32-bit. You find people getting into pickle situations still today like these: 1 2 3

Devs reading Phoronix and CNET may grow bias on hardware in the wild; I plead guilty. There's plenty of old stuff, but it runs Windows, so Linux hears less about it. Personally I'd rather see it running Linux than padding landfills.

FreeBSD uses a Tier1 / Tier2 approach like Allan's concept.

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#32 2013-08-22 04:14:11

Jristz
Member
From: America/Santiago
Registered: 2011-06-11
Posts: 1,022

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Allan wrote:

And those third world countries can afford the internet connection and bandwidth required to keep an Arch install up-to-date?

Priorities

So yes they can

Anyway, I not wroken not fix...or anythng like it


Well, I suppose that this is somekind of signature, no?

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#33 2013-08-22 04:36:31

rufus
Banned
From: san francisco
Registered: 2013-04-20
Posts: 153

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

its not a matter of dropping i686..... its a matter of it dropping itself
and it already is.

I mean between SSD's and DDR5 coming at some point Id feel kinda silly with a i686
  seems to me most of em are 64 bit anyway.......

Last edited by rufus (2013-08-22 04:40:59)


end ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     'the machine is not the end to the means., we are. In history, in board rooms and politic the greatest  decision and effort
        evolves from passion, lust for life, and a common sense of humanity. Never forget what you are and why'.         -me

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#34 2013-08-22 16:59:33

scjet
Banned
Registered: 2011-07-23
Posts: 172

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

ewaller wrote:
Allan wrote:

And those third world countries can afford the internet connection and bandwidth required to keep an Arch install up-to-date?

Have you seen the state of broadband in my country?  It is disgraceful.

@ewaller, Your address says  California, and you're complaining ? I'm surprised if you think your internet is bad there.
We (Canada) used to be near the top, back in the day, but now Ours is 3rd-world compared to the States'.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/09/18/cana … et-access/
I only wish we had more bandwidth in Canada, like the States, unfortunately it's locked down by our greedy (Fed-sponsored) Duopoly. Bell Canada/Rogers has been promising (lying about) big upgrades,..., and   FTTH/FTTN for well over a decade now, and of course our own (corporately-stacked) CRTC does nothing about it !,.....instead they are allowed to jack-up our rates, and "cap" the crap outta us up here.
Most of  Northern Canada is still on dial-up ! -Our Canada Geese travel farther and faster than that -Lol.....ahh forget it,  don't get me going here,

anyway, sry we went a bit off topic here.

EDIT: actually I'm not off-topic here, supporting i686 is like supporting dial-up -but wait, it's still TCP/IP,..., and still works. lol (phumes).
i686 can barely handle a true 1G Ethernet, let alone a 100Mbps Internet connection, gets all bogged down.
I say good-riddens to i686, and drop the Arch desktop support for it too, nobody is gonna buy them anyway, 'cause absolutely no one is makin' them anymore, unless in some specialized embedded thingies, ... well ok,
but in Laptops/Desktops/Tablets/... its ALL 64, or very soon to be.
big_smile

Last edited by scjet (2013-08-22 17:38:54)


The "BSD" things in life are "Free", and "Open", and so is "Arch"

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#35 2013-08-22 17:52:47

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

@scjet, we do have decent speeds available.  But it is at a pretty premium cost.  Like Canada, we have an oligopoly of telecom providers.  Or I guess, we have an oligopoly of cable internet providers.  They don't even compete with each other, as they have laid out specific zones which each covers with little (if any) overlap.  This enables them to set the prices to whatever they want as well.  Comcast seems to be somewhat better than Time Warner, though not by much.  The CEO of Time Warner actually said that fast broadband speeds are a novelty and something that US citizens don't actually want (I think they were referred to as "Americans", but that bothers me, since that would include you too, which that statement was obviously not referring to).  At least Comcast has been making some improvements to their speeds, while TW seems to be pretty stagnant (and slower all around).

It is just rather sad that US citizens tend to think of ourselves as "the best" in every aspect when it is far from the truth.  Broadband speeds are just one example, where in many tech savvy parts of the world, such as Japan, 100Mb/s is considered normal, and is cheap.  Here you would pay out the back end for such pleasantries.  Not to mention that our telecom companies completely ignore the latency aspect of networking, which is really what makes normal internet usage snappier.

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#36 2013-08-22 19:14:30

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

scjet wrote:

Your address says  California, and you're complaining ? I'm surprised if you think your internet is bad there.

WoonderWoofy hit the nail on the head.  In general, you can get pretty good service in the cities.  Get more than a few miles outside of a metropolis and you almost have to go satellite.

Where I live, your choices for broadband are cable, fiber, or DSL.  All of the transporters for data work very hard to keep the cost of bandwidth orders of magnitude more than it costs to provide them.  Wireless plans top out at a couple gigabytes per month with unreasonable costs for additional data.  Broadband plans are outrageously expensive if you want to by a-la-carte internet service.  They all want you to bundle you.  For example, you can pay unreasonable prices instead of unconscionable prices if you select fiber, and allow them to provide you with television, phone, and data service.  The cable company will let you do the same thing.  As to DSL, my POTS is provided by AT&T.  Enough said.

I don't have cable and won't do business with my only cable provider choice.  I have a land line and want to get rid of it.  Fiber in my neighborhood is provided by the phone company; they too offer TV via that pipe -- don't want that either.

Fortunately, there are laws that force AT&T to provide access to smaller ISPs via DSL.  I do business with a great ISP that blocks nothing, does not throttle, and provides deterministic bandwidth.  I get 6Mb down, and around 1Mb up for about USD$30/mo.  It works for me, and they get to deal with the phone company smile  Much better than USD$150 to $180 a month for a "Discount" bundle with phone service (to allow telemarketers to annoy me) and 150 channels of TV commercials with some pay per view channels available, and a 10 to 50 Mb/sec data pipe.  Oh yeah, the bundle requires a multi-year contract.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#37 2013-08-22 22:20:01

scjet
Banned
Registered: 2011-07-23
Posts: 172

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

mmm, interesting, well what can I say,
It definitely sounds like the big Coporations in both our countries are the ones who're really calling the shots, and NOT our (so-called) "National" representative Governments, for the people.
  "Conspiracy-FACTS" anyone ?
true.

But Hey, atleast you have the option of "Fiber". (inner city-core fer sure), whereas, we just got plain "LIED" to, for the last 20 years, so far ...

Last edited by scjet (2013-08-22 22:29:17)


The "BSD" things in life are "Free", and "Open", and so is "Arch"

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#38 2013-08-22 22:38:48

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Often times fiber is not really all that great.  For example, here in Northern California, we are offered fiber as well (actually I would have to live 8 houses down the street to be offered fiber).  But the fiber speeds are ~10Mb/s and provided by at&t, along with a great two year contract.

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#39 2013-08-22 23:18:45

scjet
Banned
Registered: 2011-07-23
Posts: 172

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Well, correct if I'm wrong, but copper (dsl-phone wires and/or Cable) db loss is measured in meters. With Fiber it's measured in miles/km's.
Fiber technology has done everything, including proving to be the best/fastest/the most bandwidth powerful way to communicate. speed of light beats all.
Unless of course we have a better quantum way to bend black-holes into worm-holes to travel in.
The fact that Telecom providers are "purposefully" NOT taking advantage of this technology is not our fault.

I mean Canada is vastly spread out, it's either gonna be Fiber (FTTN/FTTH), or Satellite. well, just like you guys, we instead got the Shaft (err I meant Satellite)-and you're right, we too are stuck with a very expensive "bundled" multi-product, on multi-year contract(s). There are very limited choices here, these days.
The whole idea for a "Nortel Networks" back in the early 90's, as an example, ...,was to provide un-heralded Fibre-Optic develpment, and yes, mostly for that communications' reasoning.
I mean "sand/glass" is still 1000's of time cheaper than "copper".
-But we all know now what happened to Nortel Networks -pffft ! -Up In Smoke, RCMP investigations proved nuthin' even though a lot of people, worldwide, lost money, but a very small few made billions'.

anyway, it's all a pretty sad development, they're ALL just a bunch of "bean-counters", and just like the hamsters they are, they do what they're told, no matter what.
but hey, those investment "stock-holders" are sure happy !
Hahah wink

Last edited by scjet (2013-08-22 23:21:12)


The "BSD" things in life are "Free", and "Open", and so is "Arch"

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#40 2013-08-22 23:23:10

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Yes, fiber itself is faster.  But you know telecom corporations and their caps.  They've got to cap anything and everything (except cost), or else the customer might get the edge on them!

Anyway, I think this is now officially OT.

Last edited by WonderWoofy (2013-08-22 23:23:23)

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#41 2013-08-22 23:35:16

jasonwryan
Anarchist
From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: [solved] Farewell i686!

Yep. We are done.


Closing.


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