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Arch Linux Preparing To Deprecate i686 Support

posted by FatPhil on Thursday January 26 2017, @11:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the all-the-world's-a-Cray dept.

"exec" writes in with this story from Phoronix

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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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:32PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:32PM (#459153) Journal

    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?

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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday January 27 2017, @10:16AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Friday January 27 2017, @10:16AM (#459405) Journal
    Last time I did the maths, it cost about £1/Watt for a device that's on all year around (it's probably higher now). A RPi uses about 5W (less idle), an old x86 machine is going to be at least 40W, often 60-80W. The cost of the power difference for one year is more than the cost of the RPi. If your power consumption is already high enough, then you won't notice. If you're in a fairly energy efficient home then you will. Even if you don't notice, saving £50/year is an extra beer or two a month.
    --
    sudo mod me up

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 27 2017, @04:10PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Friday January 27 2017, @04:10PM (#459524) Journal

      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...