[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

[R James]

2010/9/25 Giuseppe Ghibò <ghibomgx at gmail.com>:
>
> 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.).

Since the vast majority of new processors are 64-bit capable, I see no
point in *only* supporting the newest of the old CPUs.  All the 32-bit
stuff will eventually die on its own anyways.

I *definitely* do not want to see dropping support for everything that
doesn't do SSE2 (which was discussed in the Fedora thread you linked).

IMHO, just sticking with i586 support is the path-of-least-resistance
and doesn't alienate people who must use older hardware out of
financial or geographic necessity.

I would not use KDE as a basis for ruling out support of older
hardware.  Mageia will offer many lightweight alternatives to KDE.

Because the kernel is modular, excluding older drivers may save some
hard disk space, but won't affect the actual kernel size much.  As
soon as you exclude support for ISA, someone will come along wondering
why their $VeryImportantOlderHW no longer works.  ;o)

I've heard absolutely no complaints about how Mandriva runs on SSE2
capable, 32-bit only systems.  In fact, I have heard quite the
opposite.  People coming from other distros are saying Mandriva is
*faster*.

Executive summary: If it ain't broke, Mageia should't fix it.

But that's JMHO.  :o)