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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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Tempt not a desperate man.
-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:34PM
You really know when the developers are no longer using setups like your own; things break all the time.
It became very apparent when the kernel developers all moved to multi-core x86-64; all the single-core, 32-bit pathways started breaking regularly in new builds.
As for Arch, it's always been helmed by snobbish know-it-all tyrants, who are perfectly comfortable running roughshod over those who are not members of the recognized elite.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @01:13PM
Me too, on an EeePC. Haven't found a replacement for it, there are basically no 10" laptops anymore, and the 11" ones are horribly expensive, ultra-thin with hardly any connectors, and most of them have mirrors where the screen should be (which also disqualifies all the tablets/convertibles which are at least cheaper - though all more expensive than the EeePC was).
Basically unless you NEED more CPU power, all modern laptops offer is less for a much higher price. And I really could use something a little more modern...
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:11PM
Me too, on an EeePC. Haven't found a replacement for it, there are basically no 10" laptops anymore
I've expressed similar sentiments over on the green site. A couple anonymous contributors replied, pointing out a few inexpensive 10.1" or smaller computers running Windows 10 for sale on Walmart's web shop: the RCA Cambrio [walmart.com] and Nextbook Flexx [walmart.com] detachables and Epik ELL [walmart.com] laptop. I haven't investigated these particular models for screen finish or compatibility with GNU/Linux on bare metal, though you could run Windows on bare metal and use Vagrant and Xming to run GNU/Linux applications.
Others appear to be settling for either an 11" or a Crouton'd Chromebook [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @08:22PM
Those first ones are all convertibles, i.e. tablets with a keyboard.
The problem with tablets is
- touchscreen, thus glaring
- tiny SSD, SOLDERED IN (though admittedly a bit larger than what my netbook has, but then that netbook has a SD slot), RAM soldered in (and 1/4 of what I have in my netbook, that is NOT an upgrade)
- few to no connectors (usually, you are lucky to get 2 USB ports, 0 ethernet etc. etc.)
So exactly what I said: a SOLID downgrade compared to the 10 year old netbook.
The Acer Aspire One C/D that gets thrown around are only sold used, and for fairly high prices (for used, 6 year old computers at least).
Anything I've looked at below $600 was "I don't think I'd have a use for it for free", and even most of the > $1000 get at best a "well, at least the CPU got faster" grade.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:03PM
Got also some x86 still in use:
* VIA Epia 2 small personal server, mostly for email
* AMD Duron 750MHz, as living room sound system and wireless AP
* Intel Atom netbook, travel (development) laptop
All run Gentoo Linux.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:13PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:39PM
To save a few extra dollars per year is no compelling reason to rebuild a working system, especially when there is sentimental value in keeping the old one running.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:00PM
Yeah, basically that... it works and I hardly throw hardware away. Electricity costs are hardly an issue.
(Score: 3, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:08PM
the AMD Duron is a lot slower than a Raspberry Pi 3
The Duron is the sound system! You don't want to replace good old tubes with modern transistor technique! [theaudioarchive.com], no matter how slow the Duron is. Also, with the higher power consumption it does provide this warm (nostalgic) feeling.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:59PM
Anything modern will also be back-doored, so there is that.
Not sure if the RPI 3 is "small" enough to avoid that.
I decided years ago the way to avoid treacherous hardware was to go big (Servers), or go small (embedded), since the consumer space was thoroughly sabotaged with DRM.
(Score: 4, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:32PM
I just do not understand this argument.
I recently started building out my home network. Two old laptops running virtual servers, a new pfsense hardware firewall, some pis and webcams and an extra switch and a dozen fans and other support hardware. As far as I can tell, my power bill hasn't increased a dime -- any change is lost in the noise. I measured it with a Kill-A-Watt and the entire cabinet combined uses about the same amount of power as a single floor lamp.
My parents have a lightbulb in the basement that they never turn off, because it's a pull switch way in the back and there's no other light, so once it's out you need a flashlight to find it and turn it back on. That single bulb wastes more power than ALL of my old hardware.
For a corporation running a massive datacenter, power consumption matters. For a home user, compared to your fridge or AC or whatever else a couple extra computers are practically nothing. So unless I need the horsepower, why spend hundreds to replace them with newer hardware?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday January 27 2017, @10:16AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 27 2017, @04:10PM
Depends on what kind of x86 system you're talking about. Obviously if you're running some massive gaming desktop with an 800W power supply it's gonna drain a lot of power. But on the other end of the spectrum, headless laptops tend to be pretty efficient -- you can easily get them below 10W. And I'd need more than one pi to replace each laptop -- if I even can at all. I run YaCY as one of four virtual servers on my eight year old laptop, but last time I tried YaCY alone on a Pi it locked up the whole system every couple hours. I'm sure if I tweaked the settings enough I could make it work, but it certainly won't work as well.
Meanwhile, each Pi I add is around $50-$80 by the time you add power adapters, SD card, networking cables, etc. I'd need several of those, so we're talking about a couple hundred bucks, and I'd probably need to buy a new network switch too, because I'm out of ports and I'm probably not going to be able to replace my two laptops with only two Pis...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @03:36PM
Ditto. All my 4 machines are AthlonXP 2400/2600+ including a laptop.
VLC plays ripped 720p content perfectly fine in my AthlonXP 2400+. ~120W with two 2TB HD and 24" FullHD monitor.
And with Palemoon and just using Ublock Origin and NoScript can browse WAY faster than many modern laptops people brags about but don't bother to "upgrade".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:36PM
> As for Arch, it's always been helmed by snobbish know-it-all tyrants, who are perfectly comfortable running roughshod over those who are not members of the recognized elite
That's what I learned when Arch switched to systemd some years ago. The move was a huge pain to accomplish with their rolling update system, involving more than a dozen complicated commands to enter at a console. Towards the end, it went wrong somehow and left me with a broken system. Maybe I mistyped a command, or maybe their commands didn't account for some feature of my setup. Commented about the matter on the Arch forums, that maybe they shouldn't have rushed to switch to systemd so fast, and received attitude from one of the Arch maintainers. That was when I abandoned Arch. Installed Lubuntu (I usually turn to an Ubuntu distro when I want one quick) and haven't touched Arch since.
I've tried lots of distros. Someone says Arch is for Gentoo wannabes who don't want to do lots of compiling. Well, I've tried Gentoo. With roughly 1000 packages installed, and packages being updated on average perhaps 4 times a year, that's a bit more than 10 updates per day, all of which must be compiled. A big one, like an update to X, took hours to do. The worst was an update to gcc. Compile new gcc with old gcc, then compile new gcc again, with new gcc. Then, recompile EVERYTHING with new gcc.
These days, I'm not as interested in experimenting with the system. I just want a stable distro that takes minimal effort to maintain, don't want to spend lots of time being my own sysadm any more, rather focus on other work.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:44PM
Is that the optimisation they call "loop unrolling"?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:59PM
That reminds me of a Slashdot comment I read in my youth: Some guy said that he was a long-time Linux user who switched to the Macintosh because he was tired of tinkering and wanted a system that Just Works; at the time, I thought "Well, to each his own, but I love tinkering, and I cannot imagine enjoying a system that doesn't offer such control!"
Well, my relationship to tinkering has grown cold over the years, and now we're just uncomfortable bedfellows.
I think this explains the falling out: In my youthful exuberance, I felt my tinkering led me to an ever more perfect creation; yet, what I've found over the years is that the shifting sands of technology and "community" interests means that all of one's carefully crafted work eventually becomes a stagnant, incompatible wasteland. If one doesn't submit to the Tyranny of the Majority, then one is forced to become an old codger, yelling at those short-sighted, sycophantic, disgustingly exuberant youths to get off your command line! Just leave me and my programs alone, you uncouth, ill-bred scalawags!
I mean, if you're going to acquiesce to the unwashed masses, you might as well be getting some customer service (e.g., from a company that is paid to construct your computing system, like Apple).
So, to that "old" man on Slashdot: I get it now. Life is short; use a system that eases the suffering.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:23PM
Mate on Xubuntu 12.04?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base