[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

Sun Sep 26 10:11:40 CEST 2010

2010/9/26 Tux99 <tux99-mga at uridium.org>
+
+On Sun, 26 Sep 2010, Giuseppe Ghibò wrote:
+>
+> > Centos4 IS NOT a modern distro. It is a LTS started in 2005 and so it
+> > maintains 2005's original skeleton of kernel, gcc, glibc and X. That's
+> FIVE
+> > years old.
+>
+> I'm quite sure Centos5/RHEL5 would install and run fine on it too,
+> Debian would almost certainly too, the point is when you don't
+> install/use a GUI, Linux still can run fine on very old low end
+> hardware.
+>
+
+kernel 2.6.18 is a lot different than 2.6.31/33. As I said I invite to RUN
+the installation/installer from scratch (there is the dual-arch installer on
+a CD) of 2010.1 or cooker in such hardware. And if successful, report the
+memory usage without any service started apart the login ttys. We are not
+using the installation tools of CentOS or Debian. NetBSD would have probably
+even the tiny one since AIM of being still compatible to m68k hardware.
+
+
+>
+>
+> > As example MDV 2007.1, which is 3 years old, was still very
+> > usable and responsive on my P4/ATI (maybe not as much as stable with 3D
+> > acceleration), but 2010.0 ISN'T.
+>
+> Again, you are missing the point, you are talking about desktop/GUI use!
+> Computers get used for a lot of other purposes, not just desktop/GUI use!
+>
+>
+
+
+>
+> > That's why I in some way asked a survey of oldest hardware based
+> > on own experiences.
+>
+> Well, my oldest hardware that I still have working is a dual cpu
+> Pentium 233MMX (the original i586) with 384MB RAM (currently has 2008.1
+>
+
+in i586 we are not even using MMX. As I said 2008.1 is not 2010.1 but 4
+generation distro behind. Since it's not LTS, you might try to upgrade to
+2010.1.
+
+
+> on it) and a VIA C3 (samuel2 core, i586 since it lacks CMOV) box with
+> 512MB RAM which has mdv 2010.1 installed on it and works fine for it's
+> purpose too (headless home server running 24/7 and only uses 10Watts).
+>
+
+what is the output of "cpuinfo" there?
+
+
+>
+> > Very interesting, but will such "industrial use" will be target for
+> Mageia
+> > (BTW, certainly socket 775 CPU will support SSE and SSE2...)? If they
+> have
+> > an ISA slot, I guess is for maintaning the compatibility with some old
+> fancy
+> > (and maybe custom) card, certainly not for an ISA ethernet card that can
+> be
+> > easily replaced with a cheap PCI one or the one on board.
+>
+> That was just one example, there are many other situations were you
+> still find ISA hardware, especially in developing countries.
+>
+>
+> > Not exactly. I'm not talking in just using -march=<something> but in also
+> > pushing -mfpmath=sse -msse (and maybe -msse2) , which should be much more
+> > than JUST 1-2% (1-2% is usually the benchmark tolerance)...
+>
+> AFAIK SSE will only help with media apps (mplayer, etc) and they do
+> autodedect already anyway so in practice nothing is gained.
+>
+
+-mfpmath=sse would replace the x87 with sse. Of course for any CPU not
+having the SSE would result in a segfault or illegal instruction report
+rather than a drop of performance as in case of changing the optimization
+but maintaining the backward compatibility.
+
+
+>
+>
+> > being realistic I think it's a lot of work and there aren't the
+> resources,
+> > so a choice of the default flags should be done.
+>
+> Agreed that would be too much work for very little benefit, the default
+> flags of Mandriva are just fine since they still work on i586.
+>
+
+If you are able to break the Page's law you are welcome. :-)
+[http://www.appscout.com/2009/05/moores_law_meet_larry_pages_la.php]
+
+
+>
+> We could have some selected packages also as i686 (like MIB does and
+> like the kernel already is), like for example all the media players, but
+> making the whole distro i686 would break too many uses of it.
+>
+
+as I said you are forgetting two of the most important like glibc and
+kernel. As I said it's not that difficult to provide such packages (even
+optimized for VIA C3 and C7) but require a little bit more than rebuilding
+with specifying --target=c3,c7,xxx in rpm building.
+
+I also think that sometimes application due to poor cache (including ATOM)
+would run faster when compiled with -Os instead of -O2...; we could
+introduce it for a common .i386.rpm package.
+
+Bye
+Giuseppe.
+
+In a challenge of better supporting legacy hardware, why not adding Mageia
+super-Legacy no-desktop section? where we are doing exactly the opposite of
+supporting newer hardware. E.g.:
+
+- remove i18n support, only LANG=C
+- optimize for tiny cache
+- reduce the # of fonts installed
+- no themes
+- reduce # of things in /etc/profile.d
+- no extra audio daemon support (pulse, etc) or even no audio support
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