Arch Linux Preparing To Deprecate i686 Support

[sireangelus]

honestly i would deprecate also <core2

[ResponseWriter]

People tend to install 32bit OS on low mem machines also, so something just being 64bit capable does not really help everytime in practice

I guess those netbooks are maybe tipically with 1GB RAM (maybe even less ), where GPU even bite 256 out of it

He, he, let alone world at moment where hardware looks even worse on average, but even on steam 1/3 of people has 4GB RAM or lower... those all will cry if you drop them either 32bit OSs or even worse 32bit binaries

Mine is N270 with 1GB RAM (upgraded to 2GB) so 32-bit is the only option there.

Like it or not, a lot of new machines out there in the mainstream (i.e. 'price-conscious') end of the market start at 2GB and 32-bit does tend to use slightly less memory. Even the Raspberry Pi distros for Raspberry Pi 3 (64-bit CPU, 1GB) tend to be 32-bit for this reason (but projects like Arch Linux ARM compile their own packages).

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Aren't those Intel Compute Stick based on 32 bit atoms? Will they lose support?

People with either aged or garbaged Systems (like recent x86 Atoms)

Intel BayTrail is x86_64, you just need one file (Item 1) and available Internet connection to get Linux installed.

[Holograph]

This will make my netbook sad...

Netbooks were always sad. Glad that fad didn't last long at all.

[Niarbeht]

Long live Gentoo!
The one and only that is all about choice.
Runs with ot without systemd and runs even on i486. Or on your latest and greates amd64 or a hacked gaming-console.

For those who just blare "yeah, kill non-64bit-x86 with fire": You have no clue. Or you are too young. Or both.
There are still enough machines out there doing a fine job "even" with a "lowly" 32bit x86 CPU. Automates, embedded systems, machines in private households, boxes driving expensive measurement devices in laboratories... It's good that there are still some who will support it.

Any why should supporting a "different" arch be stopping progress? With the same "right" you could say: Why support Linux/BSD? Don't hamper the progress of Windows10!

Supporting a CPU architecture takes time and effort and energy. Are you gonna pay people to do something they don't want to bother with doing anymore?

Stop being ridiculous. Gentoo will drop support for anything and everything that people don't want to bother supporting.

[dungeon]

Obligatory remark: Steam statistics are bullshit on average, even on Windows.

That said, who cares about people on windows in a discussion about people on linux again?

People are people, no difference... they say what they use and that is it.

Microsoft released WIndows 10 32bit AFAIR because they said something like 30 million users still wants it... percentage is not different for Linux too i think, if we claim that we have 2% of market... basically that still means and it is quite possible how 600K Linux users care about 32bit OS . And why? Because people are the same, have same x86 hardware here and there - so the same possiblity...

[DIRT]

Long live Gentoo!
The one and only that is all about choice.
Runs with ot without systemd and runs even on i486. Or on your latest and greates amd64 or a hacked gaming-console.

For those who just blare "yeah, kill non-64bit-x86 with fire": You have no clue. Or you are too young. Or both.
There are still enough machines out there doing a fine job "even" with a "lowly" 32bit x86 CPU. Automates, embedded systems, machines in private households, boxes driving expensive measurement devices in laboratories... It's good that there are still some who will support it.

Any why should supporting a "different" arch be stopping progress? With the same "right" you could say: Why support Linux/BSD? Don't hamper the progress of Windows10!

Most builds like that I see running 32 bits for science don't run arch anyway lol

[starshipeleven]

People tend to install 32bit OS on low mem machines also, so something just being 64bit capable does not really help everytime in practice

My netbook with n455 worked decently with 64bit and 2GiB of RAM (both on windows and Linux), while with 1 GiB it was running out of memory too often even with a 32bit system (Linux) with just firefox, and Thunderbird open, and running like total crap on 32bit windows 7 starter.

In general, even low-resource distros recommend 1GiB or more now.

I guess those netbooks are maybe tipically with 1GB RAM (maybe even less ), where GPU even bite 256 out of it

Atoms in netbooks had a bullshit GPU, the OEM rarely assigned more than 8 MiB to it, in my netbook it was configurable and max was 64 MiB.

That fun "let's assign random ridiculous amounts of MB to the iGPU for no fucking reason" happens on laptops with AMD APUs that have half-decent iGPU.
Like my current "netbook" with an E1-1200, that wastes 512MiB of RAM for the GPU for lulz and I can't change it. On a board with 4GiB of soldered RAM.

He, he, let alone world at moment, but even on steam 1/3 of people has 4GB RAM or lower... those all will cry if you drop them either 32bit OSs or even worse 32bit binaries

Obligatory remark: Steam statistics are bullshit on average, even on Windows.

That said, who cares about people on windows in a discussion about people on linux again?

[Pajn]

For those who just blare "yeah, kill non-64bit-x86 with fire": You have no clue. Or you are too young. Or both.
There are still enough machines out there doing a fine job "even" with a "lowly" 32bit x86 CPU. Automates, embedded systems, machines in private households, boxes driving expensive measurement devices in laboratories... It's good that there are still some who will support it.

If any of those run an enthusiast, rolling release and pretty bleeding edge distro someone have done their job very wrong.
You must keep some kind of perspective when you talk about support, or anything really.

[starshipeleven]

For those who just blare "waah, they dropped support for i686": You have no clue. Or you are too young. Or both.

Fixed.
These announcements just means they won't support officially that, or in this specific case that they will not make i686 installation media (as you can't drop 32bit packages, too much stuff still needs them even on 64bit, like say Steam, or pretty much all other bullshit proprietary applications).

This does not mean you won't be able to get Arch on i686 again, only that the userbase will be served by a downstream project.
For example, Arch ARM is technically a downstream project and Arch people have nothing to do with it, same as Debian for old powerPC Macs.