Arch Linux Preparing To Deprecate i686 Support

[dungeon]

Are you sure it is not actually 64bit capable? N4xx and N5xx are actually 64bits CPUs

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

[Tomin]

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.

Yes, it's good that some distributions support it. I wonder how long Debian will support 32-bit x86. I kind of imagine that they would support it fairly long time, but I actually don't know enough to be sure. They seem to have dropped anything lower than i686, so no more K6-II for example (it's too slow anyway, but that's what I happen to have, used to play old Windows/DOS games on 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!

That's not a good example. If people didn't work on Linux or BSD, then they probably wouldn't work on Windows either. Microsoft doesn't share Windows source code freely, you know.

[pininety]

So sad to see this happen (still have an 32bit Aspire One and use aArch on an Via Eden board as my home router) but understand there reasoning. Hopefully we will get a i686 arch like the arm repos.

[stqn]

"Hopefully we'll see other Linux distribution vendors do a similar maneuver this year!"

Sorry but that’s a really stupid thing to say .

[starshipeleven]

This will make my netbook sad...

Are you sure it is not actually 64bit capable? N4xx and N5xx are actually 64bits CPUs

[Adarion]

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!

[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.

[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%

[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.

[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