Arch Linux Preparing To Deprecate i686 Support

[andrei_me]

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

[Modu]

Just another April fools joke, isn't it?
Wait! It is already January...They are serious!

[M@GOid]

I remember a few months ago, a professor came to me to take a look at a old netbook with those 32 bits only, single core Atoms. She said that it was unable to check her emails at Yahoo.

I looked at it and it can load the page, but at painfully slow pace, since Yahoo Mail is poorly designed, javascript heavy page. I checked other heavy pages in other websites and came to conclusion that it was not a problem of a bad Windows install (I checked with Linux too), it was just the case that her machine was not up to the task of surfing effortlessly the modern web anymore.

Those machines were very slow when they were new, but today they become insufferable. More modern Atoms are still acceptable, but if you didn't want to make compromises surfing the web today, just take a more powerful machine. It come a time it is just better to let go the old buddy.

[ResponseWriter]

I remember a few months ago, a professor came to me to take a look at a old netbook with those 32 bits only, single core Atoms. She said that it was unable to check her emails at Yahoo.

I looked at it and it can load the page, but at painfully slow pace, since Yahoo Mail is poorly designed, javascript heavy page. I checked other heavy pages in other websites and came to conclusion that it was not a problem of a bad Windows install (I checked with Linux too), it was just the case that her machine was not up to the task of surfing effortlessly the modern web anymore.

You're right, I find especially browsing with Firefox, but some browsers allow disabling JavaScript and have no difficulty at all. In fact, with JavaScript disabled many sites are *faster* on my old Atom processor than using Firefox on my desktop.

Remember, too, that web browsing is not the only use case for these devices. For example, I use mine for coding, watching pre-downloaded TV programs (the BBC is the main broadcaster in the UK and - for now - allows downloading from their 'iPlayer' catch-up service), SSH and remote access to other devices, etc.

[anarki2]

I remember a few months ago, a professor came to me to take a look at a old netbook with those 32 bits only, single core Atoms. She said that it was unable to check her emails at Yahoo.

I looked at it and it can load the page, but at painfully slow pace, since Yahoo Mail is poorly designed, javascript heavy page. I checked other heavy pages in other websites and came to conclusion that it was not a problem of a bad Windows install (I checked with Linux too), it was just the case that her machine was not up to the task of surfing effortlessly the modern web anymore.

Those machines were very slow when they were new, but today they become insufferable. More modern Atoms are still acceptable, but if you didn't want to make compromises surfing the web today, just take a more powerful machine. It come a time it is just better to let go the old buddy.

You're totally obviously right, but then comes some smartarse and says "but but it's 2GHz!" as if clock was an indicator of ANYTHING.

[schmidtbag]

I sincerely hope they are keeping the 32-bit compatibility libraries in place even if they are moving off supporting native 32-bit systems.
There are plenty of cases where you need a 32-bit fallback library.

I am confident they will keep those. The packages are named as "lib32", but to my knowledge, the i686 build does not have the "32" in their lib names. The "lib32" packages also come from a different repo (multilib) so these 2 points strongly suggest they are maintained separately and will not be affected by Arch dropping i686.

As for executables that only come in 32 bit, that's a different story. I'm not sure how many of those exist in multilib (I figure there aren't any at all).

[dungeon]

Meanwhile 8% on steam use some 32bit Windows OS, which is double more than modern OS_X and "modern" mostly Ubuntu 16.04 Linux combined How wording can be beautuful when used together , that way Linux does not sound it is actually even 10 times less there

Also steam survey stats tend to show much much much more modern hardware than reality is

Of course distros are free to choose when they wanna drop somthing, i wouldn't be even surprised if somone wanna drop 64bit - droping something always means less work to do

[M@GOid]

You're right, I find especially browsing with Firefox, but some browsers allow disabling JavaScript and have no difficulty at all. In fact, with JavaScript disabled many sites are *faster* on my old Atom processor than using Firefox on my desktop.

Remember, too, that web browsing is not the only use case for these devices. For example, I use mine for coding, watching pre-downloaded TV programs (the BBC is the main broadcaster in the UK and - for now - allows downloading from their 'iPlayer' catch-up service), SSH and remote access to other devices, etc.

Yes you're right, there still plenty of uses for those machines. I remember a few years ago a guy commenting that he can do about 10 hours of work in one of those early HP netbooks with the really big batteries. That is some serious autonomy even today for a small, light mobile system.



But for that professor, it was time for something new, after all, being a college professor she really can afford a new one.

[Ezio21]

Finally! They should do it already year ago with all other distros. 5% of people with obsolete PC s were stopping progress for 95%

[cRaZy-bisCuiT]

It's about time! Thank you very much Arch Linux team!


People with either aged or garbaged Systems (like recent x86 Atoms) should consider to either upgrade or not to buy trash in the first place.