[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

Sat Sep 25 17:53:50 CEST 2010

2010/9/25 Filipe Rosset <rosset.filipe at gmail.com>
+
+> On 09/25/2010 09:16 AM, R James wrote:
+>
+>> On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:59 AM, Patrice BRUNELLE
+>> <patrice.brunelle at free.fr>  wrote:
+>>
+>>> Le vendredi 24 septembre 2010 à 15:51 -0500, R James a écrit :
+>>>
+>>>>
+>>>> Technically, the i686 started with the Pentium Pro.  (Remember that?
+>>>>  :o)
+>>>>
+>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6_(microarchitecture)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6_%28microarchitecture%29>
+>>>>
+>>>
+>>> Yes I remember that. And ?
+>>>
+>>>  Its just a precision to the subject title.  i686 began with the
+>> Pentium Pro, not Pentium II.
+>>
+>> I'm not sure what performance benefits can be gained from compiling
+>> for i686 vs i586.  Probably not much except for multimedia
+>> applications which most of those can auto-detect the CPU's
+>> capabilities anyways.
+>>
+>>
+> Just for reference, the Fedora Project was changed from i586 to i686:
+>
+> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Mass_Rebuild#Driving_Features
+> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support
+> http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-devel-list@redhat.com/msg02583.html
+> http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-devel-list@redhat.com/msg02889.html(with 'benchmarks')
+>
+> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue162#Fedora_11_Will_Support_i586_Instruction_Set
+>
+>
+>  There are still people running AMD K6's (ie: me) which is also i586.
+>> If we compile for i686 and newer, they won't even be able to boot the
+>> installer.
+>>
+>> Therefore, I agree with the decision to keep i586 support.
+>>
+>
+> I agree too.
+>
+>
+IMHO the problem is not finding an architecture to fit the i586 or i686 rpm
+flags, rather to find the minimum CPU and memory requirement worthwhile for
+a decent usage. With KDE if we look at the Mandriva 2010.1, it's barely
+usable on a P4-3000 with 1-2GB RAM, or a AMD Barton 2500. Barely means that
+windows and applications are pretty slow to open, switching is slow, etc.;
+since netbook are so popular we can consider the minimum requirements as
+those of a typical 2010 netbook, which has ATOM 1.6Ghz processor and 1GB
+memory. In other words we can consider as default the presence of the SSE
+instruction set. ATOM has even the SSE2, which would be even better, but
+that would left out some AMD CPU (some older AMD, like 1.2Ghz has only the
+3DNow and not SSE). I would drop compiling for old ISA drivers in kernel
+(think to some old ISA 3com card, like 3C505, etc.).
+
+G.
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