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Arch Linux is moving ahead with preparing to deprecate i686 (x86 32-bit) support in their distribution.
Due to declining usage of Arch Linux i686, they will be phasing out official support for the architecture. Next month's ISO spin will be the last for offering a 32-bit Arch Linux install. Following that will be a nine month deprecation period where i686 packages will still see updates.
Any Soylentils still making major use of 32-bit x86? And any of you using Arch Linux? Distrowatch still lists Arch Linux as a top 10 distribution.
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Arch Linux Preparing To Deprecate i686 Support
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:09PM
Offhand, I can't think of any 32bit x86 processor systems that you would actually want to put an entire Linux distro on. Maybe just a kernel and a very small subset of standard and/or custom software for embedded environments but not a full blown OS with all the trimmings. How about you lot?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:39PM
There are millions of devices out there that match the description of the kind of computer that you cannot even imagine; believe it or not, for most of modern computing, people have run 32-bit x86 systems, and they are still capable of running anything that is worthy of being considered "an entire Linux distro".
Maybe your Linux distro wouldn't be such a bloated piece of junk, if the developers were more concerned with making sure it could run on such "ancient" machines.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:11PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Touché) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:24PM
I have a 5 watt embedded 32bit X86 machine with 2 gigs of RAM you insensitive clod.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday January 26 2017, @05:37PM
Curious as to what system that is.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DECbot on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:43PM
I have two PCs with a VIA C7 Eden CPU. These are passively cooled and barely sip power. They work great for my home server needs--one file server and a second web/email server.
I am retiring the file server so I can take advantage of ZFS, I rather not retire the email/web server as that box works like a champ. I was also planing to use the old file server as a pfsense box. As more Linux distributions ditch i686, I think I will have to switch fully to BSD or one of the 'do everything from source' distributions like Gentoo or Slackware.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:19PM
Wow, that brought back memories. I remember the time my friend booted his computer and I hadn't heard of VIA yet, but staring back at me in the console was "VIA VIA VIA" where I had always seen "AuthenticAMD." Asked him about it, he had no idea, so I asked his father, who just laughed when we insinuated that he hacked the machine to get the message there.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:53PM
Wow, that's some proper old kit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Friday January 27 2017, @06:49AM
Slackware is NOT a source distribution, though there are included tools and available repositories of source based packages (sbopkg and slackbuilds.com being the most well known in those categories). .t?z packages are binary packages and the system is installed from such packages, with some repositories also being available for non-included software (Alienbob's repo probably the most well known here, able to be access with slackpkg+ in a similar fashion to using apt-get).
I guess the point is, it's not nearly as time consuming as installing and keeping up to date an actual source based distribution such as Gentoo. Anyone who's ever compiled VLC from source will agree that perhaps it's better not to have to. Slackware got it's name because it IS designed for slackers. Just not corner cutters.
(Score: 1) by Triddle on Friday January 27 2017, @02:12AM
Perhaps, but my Acer netbook still runs pretty well, and given the size it is very convenient when I don't wish to cart my 64 bit notebook around. I'd also care a lot less if it was stolen or damaged.
Both run FreeBSD perfectly well, although only 32 bit on the netbook of course. If a Linux distro won't run on hardware like that then fine, but it doesn't mean that hardware has ceased to exist or be useful.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Monday January 30 2017, @04:11AM
Of course, it depends on what you're going to do with it. A P4 would probably not be a very good choice for something that runs 24/7, but if it's only going to see a couple hours a week of use the payback in power savings is going to be a very long time.
A P4 with 2-3GB of ram should have no problems running most version of Linux. It'll even run Windows 7 in an acceptable manner. Plus there's other 32-bit chips out there too, Pentium M/Core Solo/Core Duo, and they were still making 32-bit Atoms not too long ago (most of which are slower than a P4 anyway).
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:47PM
the oldest system I would tend to use would be a core2 duo or something of that age. that's 64bit for sure. I have a laptop that shipped with win7-32 on that c2duo but its still a proper 64bit machine.
still, its a shame to remove good code that COULD be useful, in a pinch. I wonder what makes them want to remove it. is it really getting in the way? perhaps just leave it as 'untested' but still leave the code in.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:07PM
just thought of a 32bit system I still care about: older atom fanless mini-itx boxes that make good firewalls or audio playback/headless systems.
voyage linux used to be a good choice but it looks like its been a long time since it had updates.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:52PM
Well, as near as I can tell, it's because Arch is/wants to be a desktop distro and they don't really make 32bit desktop processors for quite some time now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:57PM
Agree with you, only without the limitation to 32 bit processors, that's true of anything. The only reason to install 'the entire distro' is because you have more storage than you know how what to do with and you're short of time.
Also I do have 32bit x86 hardware still running and doing its job admirably. An EeePC, running customized Slackware not Arch though.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:15PM
Not really, I've tried installing a 32bit browser along with all the stuff that goes along with it along side a 64bit browser in order to get software that was poorly programmed to work. Having a separate 32bit install is just a lot easier than trying to figure out how to get those components to play nice with each other.
Plus, this is the 21st century, the 20gb you need for that, is usually not hard to come by unless you're dealing with a tiny SSD or ancient disk that's probably going to fail soon anyways. Even my laptop from 5 years ago had over 300gb of space on it.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Thursday January 26 2017, @01:33PM
From memory I've think I've still got some legacy toolchain things (& bespoke tools from vendors) for embedded system cross compiles that are 32 bit only and would be impossible and/or a royal PITA to try and rebuild or run on a 64/multilib system, but you still want a decent host development environment to use them.
Of course there's VirtualBox, and the older install iso images aren't going anywhere, so just running legacy tools inside a 32 bit VM on the older distro means this isn't a problem provided ssh & X-remoting continues to work.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:07PM
Is the old VMware tool still available? Plug in a running system, and the virtualization tool would move it from hardware into a virtual machine. Or, if the hardware wasn't running, it would make a copy of the hard disk, then fire it up for the move. Or, that's how I remember it working, anyway.
Ahhhh, we have something here - https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1018406 [vmware.com] Looks like names have changed (presumably to protect the guilty) but the end goal is the same. Migrate hardware OS's to VM's.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:55PM
Fair nuff. That only means you need those specific 32bit libs though, rather than an entire 32bit system.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:12PM
The issue isn't the processor so much as the software.
TFA and TFS are somewhat unclear about whether this is all 32-bit versions or just the ones that are for i686 based processors. I don't run Arch, but I do regularly use 32bit Linux as Cisco refuses to release a version of Webex that works with 64bit Linux. It works, but you don't get sound and I haven't found anything that allows it to work that doesn't ultimately get back to 32-bit software.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:56PM
Same thing when you're talking about Arch. For 32bit code they only had the 686 version.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:54PM
Until earlier this year, I ran a development and database server that provides the backend data acquisition for a live website [thelotterystation.com] on an older 32-bit Pentium-4* based HP server. The machine ran i386 Debian stable (Jessie) [debian.org] and hosted all the scripts that pull the live data from the site's data providers, send email updates to subscribers, and update the database on the live site.
About a month ago, I migrated the server to an ARM-based Olinuxino about the size of a pack of playing cards (now Debian stable/armhf [debian.org]), wiped the old 40GB hard drive, and turned in the HP server to a waste management company for recycling. This process was, amazingly to me, relatively trouble-free, with no drop in data provision and no subscriber e-mails missed (though one round of emails was late by more than a day due to a misconfigured cron job not finding executables in its path--sorry about that, my fault).
For reliability, I underclocked the ARM board a little. It's been running rock-solid stable, a nice surprise. My key takeaway lesson: The Allwinner A20 ARM processor is very, very slow when compared to any modern x86--or even when compared to that old Pentium 4--well-suited to this particular job but probably not for a busy live server.
(*Although the Pentium 4 processors were Intel's first with AMD64 architecture, the earliest P4s were 32-bit only, and this was such a one.)
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday January 27 2017, @04:44AM
Have to consider memory as well. 64bit really should have 4GBs+ while this C2D that I'm using with 2GBs of memory, with old memory not cheap like new memory.
I also use a T42 occasionally, 1.6Ghz Pentium M (basically a single core C2D) with only a GB of memory which doesn't even support 64bit but is plenty fast enough for light use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @07:49AM
I tend to use my hottest hardware for desktops (should be obvious) and older/slower stuff for servers, meaning, 32 bit hw.
I admin for a small hosting company and the servers are all older 32-bit hardware, most are dual P-III (yes) and they're quite fast. (Maybe I'm that good? I've always been a hotrodder- emphasis on efficiency.)
Someone else commented about how newer hardware is more efficient per watt. That's a tricky thing to say in a broad way. They may do well at full speed, but those newer processors are using way more power when doing nothing, compared to the older P-III that really doesn't need a fan- I've tried- they stay cool. (No, I do not have any P-III desktop machines.)
I have a few 64 bit capable systems, but I have no 64 bit OSes running. I've messed around with some for kicks, but I don't get what the big deal is. If you're running SolidWorks or such, OK, but for most casual desktop work? If I put a 64 bit OS on a machine, will it run faster or better than the 32 bit equivalent?