Linux 6.8 Default-Disabling 31-bit Enterprise System Architecture ELF Binary Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.8 Default-Disabling 31-bit Enterprise System Architecture ELF Binary Support

A second batch of s390 architecture changes were sent out today for the ongoing Linux 6.8 merge window...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.8-s390-Disable-ESA-31b

[dilfridge]

Ahem. We do exist. Gentoo has mostly up-to-date installation stages and binary packages for s390 (31bit) and s390x (64bit).

https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#s390

https://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/s390/binpackages/17.0/

[flakmirror]

Ahem. We do exist. Gentoo has mostly up-to-date installation stages and binary packages for s390 (31bit) and s390x (64bit).

https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#s390

https://gentoo.osuosl.org/releases/s...packages/17.0/

Ok, I'm out of the loop as I haven't used Gentoo in ages, but once you set up the system (regardless if it's a binary or source install) your build and use flags are set automatically, right? So as long as this stays as an option in the kernel Gentoo (and other source-based distros) users should be good.

While makes no difference to me personally or professionally, I'm glad this is still an option for those that might need it, so it's all good.

[FireBurn]

I'm having flashbacks to 31bit Java and only being able to have a heap of 1GB :'(

[szymon_g]

I was going to write that you made a typo and wrote 31 bit instead of 32, but 31 bit system actually exists. TIL

[dilfridge]

Ok, I'm out of the loop as I haven't used Gentoo in ages, but once you set up the system (regardless if it's a binary or source install) your build and use flags are set automatically, right? So as long as this stays as an option in the kernel Gentoo (and other source-based distros) users should be good.

While makes no difference to me personally or professionally, I'm glad this is still an option for those that might need it, so it's all good.

More or less, yes. This is a profile on its own (similar to x32 on amd64), so if you select that and grab the corresponding stage, you're good.

[stormcrow]

I was going to write that you made a typo and wrote 31 bit instead of 32, but 31 bit system actually exists. TIL

Welcome to the weird and ... well I was going to say "wonderful" but sometimes that really wasn't the case... world of archaic big iron hardware. From 36 bit words, to 31 bit ESA, and everything from 4 bits to 24 bits including 10 bit bytes, to the more familiar 8 bit bytes and hexadecimal based systems... Some early systems weren't based on hexadecimal notation systems (base 16, 0-F denoted by a trailing "h" or "0x" prefix), instead they were octal notation systems (base 8, 0-7 denoted by a trailing "o"). Examples beyond the article itself: PDP-8 had a 12 bit instruction word, the Apollo guidance computer had a 15 bit word + 1 bit parity (not the same as a 16 bit whole word), the IBM 701 from the 1950s had a 36 bit word which let it handle 10 digit computation, and notably some ARM CPUs had 24 bit words iirc.