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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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(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.)