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On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 8:08 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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> 1. Museum hardware. People have systems that are running simply |
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> BECAUSE they are old, not because they are cost-effective/etc. I'm |
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> not sure I'd even lump used hardware into this category any longer, as |
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> I'm sure there are plenty of i686+ used PCs at rock-bottom prices |
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> already out there, and maintaining pre-Y2K hardware is going to be |
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> fairly painful. For this use case i386 as the baseline makes a LOT of |
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> sense. |
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> |
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> 2. Non-museum hardware. People have x86 hardware because it is the |
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> most cost-effective solution for a task, and not merely because it is |
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> old. IMO for this use case i686 makes a lot more sense as a baseline. |
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> However, I'm honestly not sure in this day and age what these use |
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> cases even are, unless it is something you can buy for $10 at a flea |
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> market. Even if you're talking about a container running one |
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> application that only needs 500kB of RAM, is there really that much |
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> benefit to not building it for amd64? |
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> |
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I don't want to get very offtopic, but: |
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Even newer embedded i586 and i686 hardware isn't cost effective |
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considering power consumption. When considering power it often does |
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not even make sense to run donated hardware ~5 years old. |
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I don't think this should be used to completely drop support for older |
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platforms but it is probably the best argument to use to convince |
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people to get rid of their old hardware. |
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> The other argument for i386 would be that in Gentoo nobody is stuck |
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> with the defaults. So, a default that works more widely as an entry |
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> point makes a lot of sense, since anybody can set CFLAGs and do an |
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> emerge -e world to get the benefits. Then again, if we're talking |
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> about older but not ancient hardware that is still quite a bit of |
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> build time. |
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> |
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This is definitely in the spirit of Gentoo, but I think the most |
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concrete reason to support older platforms is they are demonstrably |
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more secure and people may be using them for that reason. |
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Cheers, |
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R0b0t1 |
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