It's Still Undecided Whether Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Will Support 32-bit x86 (i386)

[caligula]

there is nothing like a distribution where you don't need your own brain or just suck the compromises prepared for you because it's simply not possible to combine braindead to use and minimized bloat and then secuirty comes into the mix which leads to the always same decisions: "secure, comfortable, leightweight" while you can combine secure and leitghtweight but comfortable sacrifies the others

OTOH if you only want to optimize boot time, take a look at:
$ systemd-analyze critical-chain

It shows where the time is spent. It's easy to optimize. After that, switch to a light DE, disable those crappy firmware update services from session launch scripts, and maybe even compile your own kernel. 90% of the bloat will be gone.

[chithanh]

Intel GMA 950 can't do OpenGL 2. It's OpenGL 1.4 + some extensions and the rest is "faked" by Mesa. I.e. some of the features are implemented in software.

Implemented in software != implemented on the CPU. sRGB textures for example were implemented in shaders. This situation is similar to the double precision floating point support in r600g where hardware lacks such support.

Also, the iGPU support might be good now, but it took years to get there. Having suffered from shitty performance and drivers, my strongest feelings suggest killing them all with fire. Nobody will miss them.

It was a single developer (marcheu) who hacked together a respectably performing Gallium3D driver (i915g) for this class of hardware, which was used in Chrome OS for a while. That was in mid-2012, and the memories of the N270-fueled netbook craze were still fresh then. Although eventually the classic driver received more developer attention and started to outperform the Gallium3D one.

Of course, if you used some lesser distro that declined to offer the i915g driver, then you would suffer for a couple more years until the classic driver caught up.

[Grogan]

Linux distros work well on old hardware if you choose your environment wisely. I have Linux Mint 19.1 with XFCE on an old Atom netbook and it works decently. It uses about 125 Mb of RAM on x86, which leaves lots for applications and a bit of cache. For example, Firefox will use a lot of memory if you have it, but if you don't, it will work quite well if it has a few hundred megs at its disposal.

[calc]

Well, I'm not the one ignoring the obvious here, so... probably not.
...
Yeah, forcing people to maintain a dead architecture just because you can't be arsed to do a decent job with your own application. Sounds like one of your usual whines about how Linux third party library development, no wonder you are so angry.

I don't give a flying fuck about the "people" you speak of, which is the idiotic fucks I was talking about. Valve cares about users, not idiotic fucks, that's why what they do is praise worthy.

I use Wine for almost everything and my opinion is simply greater than your opinion.

Weasel clearly is a troll and likely a small child as it appears the only thing he uses Linux for is to run his Windows games. I'm not sure why he doesn't just use Windows in the first place other than to give him a soapbox to troll from.

Its unfortunate there isn't a way to block trolls on this forum.

[sa666666]

Weasel clearly is a troll and likely a small child as it appears the only thing he uses Linux for is to run his Windows games. I'm not sure why he doesn't just use Windows in the first place other than to give him a soapbox to troll from.

Its unfortunate there isn't a way to block trolls on this forum.

^^^^^ THIS, 100x this ^^^^^

[Weasel]

Weasel clearly is a troll and likely a small child as it appears the only thing he uses Linux for is to run his Windows games. I'm not sure why he doesn't just use Windows in the first place other than to give him a soapbox to troll from.

Its unfortunate there isn't a way to block trolls on this forum.

Says the idiot child who thinks Windows is just games. Of course all he thinks about is games, his age shows. Laughable. I actually rarely even play games at all and am out of the loop of trends to begin with.

All your "productive" "alternative" Linux apps are trash tier garbage compared to what you can find on Windows. And no I don't give a shit about office since it's the only thing Windows bashers know about, because their entire life revolves around "mobile, browse internet, write a document in office, call it a day".

Lastly, you can ARCHIVE windows apps and copy them from one system to another in most cases (if portable) not depend on some centralized piece of shit repository on every new system to install a different version of the same app. Obviously, a child who doesn't know what production-quality means wouldn't know how important a constant and static workflow is.

To a child, the shiniest new thing must be the greatest and bestest, update for the fashion. Who cares if it ruins your workflow right? Oh wait children don't even HAVE workflows since they just... play.

Maybe I don't want to fucking update my production apps because I'm used to them and they have the perfect workflow. Good luck on this shit thing called Linux if only the latest version is available in the repo.

(just to be clear: I'm talking about app distribution / compatibility on Linux, and this thread is a perfect example where they keep dropping and dropping and dropping)

[CFWhitman]

Well, the vast majority of those x86 CPUs are over 15 years old now. Have 512 MB of RAM (or less) and pre OpenGL 2.0 era fixed function pipeline GPUs. Probably fun platforms to run desktop Linux on.

It's more like 2 GB of RAM or less. Lots of 32 bit hardware has 1 to 2 GB. Some has 3 GB.

[caligula]

It's more like 2 GB of RAM or less. Lots of 32 bit hardware has 1 to 2 GB. Some has 3 GB.

Bollocks. Non-DDR SDRAM had module capacities up to 512 MB. The DDR modules were up to 1GB (or very rare 2GB non-standard modules https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/...eater+than+1GB ). DDR became available in 2002. 64-bit Pentiums in the beginning of 2004. There was a very short window of time when (desktop) systems could have had more than 1-2 GB of RAM and only x86 CPUs (compared to < 1GB RAM x86 systems between 1985-2002). But almost nobody filled all the slots with the largest possible memory modules. Almost all computers I've every seen have unpopulated slots and smaller than the maximum size memory modules.

[Guest]

The DDR modules were up to 1GB (or very rare 2GB non-standard modules https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/...eater+than+1GB )

2GB ECC DDR sticks are a standard thing, but that applies to server hardware.

[CFWhitman]

Bollocks. Non-DDR SDRAM had module capacities up to 512 MB. The DDR modules were up to 1GB (or very rare 2GB non-standard modules https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/...eater+than+1GB ). DDR became available in 2002. 64-bit Pentiums in the beginning of 2004. There was a very short window of time when (desktop) systems could have had more than 1-2 GB of RAM and only x86 CPUs (compared to < 1GB RAM x86 systems between 1985-2002). But almost nobody filled all the slots with the largest possible memory modules. Almost all computers I've every seen have unpopulated slots and smaller than the maximum size memory modules.

I am not familiar with any 64 bit Pentium that actually became available before 2005 (announced, but not available). I'm quite confident there was no big selling one. Even after 2005 arrived, it took a bit before 64 bit CPU's were more popular than 32 bit ones, particularly in laptops, which were already selling better than desktops (as I recall, the Core 2 was the first popular 64 bit Intel chip for laptops).

I remember getting a 32 bit Pentium M laptop* with the base 256 MB of RAM (because OEM's charge an arm and a leg for expanding the memory) and immediately upgrading it to 1.25 GB. Quite a few Pentium M's ended up with 1 GB (or a bit more). I remember 32 bit desktops at work that came with 512 MB and were expandable to 2 GB (four 512 MB modules), and then ones that came with 512 and were expandable to 4 GB (not that 4 GB made much sense; those could have four 1 GB modules). Those were the last 32 bit machines we bought. The next generation had Pentium D's rather than 64 bit Pentium 4's, which existed, but I don't recall ever being that popular.

I don't mean to say that there wasn't a lot of hardware sold with 512 MB or less, but a lot of laptops and netbooks were 32 bit and ended up with between 1 GB and 2 GB of RAM. Of course a lot of them were sold between 2005 and 2008.

*(I believe that my desktop was an Athlon 64 by that time, but it may have been just before that.)